Because my real job as a financial advisor keeps me focused on the events going on in the world – currently the Tea Party gubbermint shutdown- I have to read these crazy financial websites. As I’ve said previously, if you want to know what the citiots and wealthy are saying to each other read financial websites and journals. More often than not they seem entirely out of touch with reality, but in recent months there has been something of an undercurrent with respect to farming. Many are trying to assert that the reason that folks should consider a career in farming is because we will need to feed 9 – 10 billion people in the next half century. While that may be true, as my previous post asserts, we are probably going to be stupid enough to try to do that with energy, land, and capital intensive, industrial means. This article though, and several others, are suggesting it as a way to avoid a potential collapse. Some are bold enough to say it directly, this one a little less so, but the subtler message seems to be, “something is bleeped up”, we all need food, there are not going to be a lot of industrial jobs, Wall Street is coming unhinged, and we are running out of everything (a recent financial post suggested that MIT’s Limits To Growth – that we are going to essentially run out of most resources by 2030 – is spot on
{ http://www.cnbc.com/id/101051828 } ). The headline screamed that CEO’s and industry leaders were trying to figure out how to keep our infinite growth model going by improvements in technology and magic.
This quiet paradigm shift to agriculture, I think, speaks volumes. No one wants to wake up the frogs in the warming pots of water. They are whispering that the writing is on the walls and if you want to survive, you better have 1. the ability to support and feed yourself, and/or 2. have skills (like doctors and vets and general contractors and repair specialists and seamstresses, and all manner of homesteading skills) that others will need and can be used to support you.
For those who have not heard of them or not read them from my bibliography posted on JAZFarm blog, I would strongly suggest the novel, “A World Made By Hand” by James Howard Kunstler or his more serious book, “The Long Emergency”. Another would be, “Peak Everything” by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute. You may want to subscribe to Peak Moment TV on the web (or watch their videos on You Tube).
Suffice it to say that if the citiots, the greedy, and the hard and fast believers in pure “capitalism” (whatever that really is) are talking about digging in the dirt…….. someone is waking up. Get ahead of them, grow things, learn skills and more importantly….. make sure your kids do. After this recent shutdown BS going on in Washington, a truism is that they will not be there to help you. Create community, bring your family close, grow your own food, get in shape, get some callouses on your hands, buy good boots, and get busy. Remember, there is no such thing as a plant that grows Pizza, Burgers and fries. Wheat, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, carrots, corn, beans, spinach, onions, garlic, etc. all of these can be turned to pizza and beer and things much better and tastier! Learn how to preserve food, how to grow year round even in winter, raise backyard chickens, and turn your neighborhood into a collective farm. Learn to compost: Turn REAL BS into compost, and use it to grow something useful. Verbal BS simply raises the blood-pressure.
The fight being set up between this post and my last about losing 100,000 farmers by 2020, will be between those that want to control the land and those who will NEED the land. The rest of our lives are setting up to be pretty interesting.
Jim Rogers: Skip the MBA, get an agriculture degree
Jim Rogers: Skip the MBA, get an agriculture degree
Jim Rogers believes the finance industry is about to slip into secular decline. That’s why the famed investor advises young people to pursue careers in farming rather than in finance.
“If you’ve got young people who don’t know what to do, I’d urge them not to get MBAs, but to get agriculture degrees,” Rogers told CNBC.com.
That’s because the financial commentator and author of “Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets” is bearish about the entire financial field.
“Finance has been good the past 30 years, but it was not good the 30 years before that, and it’s happening again,” Rogers said. “Finance is in decline. In the future, the center of the world will not be finance—it’s going to be the producers of real goods.”
Economist Robert Shiller recently raised the related question of whether the “best and the brightest” are doing to the world a disservice by going into finance. In a September column in Project Syndicate, the Yale economics professor asked: “Are too many of our most talented people choosing career in finance—and, more specifically, in trading, speculating, and other allegedly ‘unproductive’ activities?”
(Read more: Want to get an MBA? So do a lot of others)
After all, there is a good argument that the agriculture field will present more compelling problems to solve.
“We are going to be trying to feed 9 billion people by 2050 with the same number of acres of arable land,” said Timothy Burcham, dean of agriculture and technology at Arkansas State University. Calling that task “overwhelming,” Burcham notes that “the opportunities for a person that has a graduate degree in agriculture are great now, but they are going to be really, really excellent going into the future.”
Rogers is factoring the expected rise of the agriculture industry into his investing thesis. “Recently, I’ve been looking at agriculture stocks,” Rogers said. “I’ve been excited about looking for things to buy in agriculture.”
(Read more: Farming equipment: Agriculture gets its own ‘Apple v. Windows’ battle)
And in a late Wednesday telephone interview from Singapore, Rogers’ prediction even took on a personal tone. He advised this writer: “Pursue an agriculture degree, and you’ll be rich.”
—By CNBC’s Alex Rosenberg. Follow him on Twitter: @CNBCAlex.
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