Category Archives: Philosophy and Thoughts

Things we add when the spirit moves us

Poem

A quick google search for “Farm, Weather, Poem”  turned this up.  A little humor while we float away here.  Evidently, not only is this moisture coming up from Mexico, it is also the “vaporization” of snow.  The snow pack this year was HUGE.  Now that it has gotten suddenly warmer a lot of the snow goes straight from snow to water vapor.  It spins up over the mountains and heads out to pay us a visit.  It really needs to stop.  The rivers are all again reaching flood stage and we are getting way too much rain way too fast.

The Farmer in Wet Weather

Goddess of drizzle,
driving your big
cartloads of mist
across my fields!
Send me some sun
and I’ll sacrifice
my cow — my wife —
my Christianity!

It Seems This Is Why The Vegetables Can’t Go Outside Yet

The Jet Stream is broken.  When one adds heat to our atmosphere it can hold more moisture.  Because of that, it gets heavier and slower and meanders higher and lower than it used to.  The polar vortex in the mid-west and east and the horrific winds here in the west, and the drought in the southwest seem to all have been influenced by this.  We are getting the strangest weather as we have had the prevailing winds coming almost directly out of the north, bringing cooler air.  This past weekend the mountains got to close to 3 feet of snow. Yesterday, because of winter driving conditions, Vail pass was closed and as I write it is smack dab the middle of May!  The days are not getting warm enough and the evenings as a result are not STAYING warm enough to put out the fruiting plants to harden off (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, etc.)  Because we have been getting above normal precipitation in the form of sleet and freezing rain (two days ago there was 8 inches of snow at the farm), we have not been able to do any bed preparations.  This is farming and gardening in the new normal.

Here is a chart that illustrates the issue.  I am afraid there is going to have to be alot of new adaptation in order to allow food production to continue.  On a happy note, the wheat crop seems to be loving all of this.  Here is hoping that in the next week or two things warm up some.  I don’t mind the moisture – here it is a blessing – but it really needs to warm up.  Ah the life of the farmer – always at the mercy of the elements.

http://www.intellicast.com/National/Wind/JetStream.aspx

Wordsmithing for the Cause, “I’m Going To Plant ‘Til I Can’t”

I am a guest writer for a blog called, Nature Bats Last.  Today my latest essay was posted.  I also posted it here just because.  I hope you find it interesting and thought provoking.

 

Plant til I can't

The Last Stage: Acceptance

I have been a pretty aware collapsitarian most of my life. I’m 51 and can remember watching films about jungles and oceans and all manner of eco-system topics in elementary school wondering why every film we watched had to end with a warning that if we didn’t watch our step humanity was going to destroy too much habitat for these natural beings to survive. It made me sad. Also, at that time, the population had hit 4 billion. Projected on the news and in school was that by the year 2000 we would hit close to 6 billion. As a child, I always found that mind boggling and never really thought I’d live to see the day. Of course, at the same time, I’m still pissed I didn’t get to live like the Jetsons when we hit the year 2000. We had to fight them terrorists instead, cuz they was cummin’ fer us. Meanwhile we heard nothing about a concept called blowback.

Anyone remember the commercial about pollution where the Native American in a canoe was paddling down the river past factories belching out smoke, the river itself clogged with trash and pollution? In the last scene there was a close up of him with a tear in his eye? That has always stuck with me. I think then it was called Project SOAR (Save Our American Resources).

My dream as a kid was to be a marine biologist. I always had aquariums growing up. I did fresh water, pond water set ups, marine and reef. I loved that like I can’t describe. It sounds funny but as a middle school and high school student I learned about environmental poisoning from those aquariums. An imbalance, particularly in population, unless the outside god-force (the aquarium keeper) kept the toxins at bay, the system would quickly acidify and crash the tank. I remember thinking that with all of our cars (I grew up in the Detroit area), and all of these people, weren’t we doing the same thing? After all, for all intents and purposes the earth is a closed system. The toxins are building, and there is no aquarium keeper removing the poison. In fact, the self- appointed, superior being in the aquarium, was going out of its way to create the poisons!

I have always loathed cities. To me they are the keeper of the sheep. As I tend to be kind of a bull in a china shop, I discovered first hand, through an encounter with a girlfriend’s father, just how vociferously citiots will defend the purity and sanctity of cities. On a ride he gave me back from their house one evening just before going off to college, I made one comment too many about how cities don’t feed people and that they were responsible for most of our ills (I was 17). Completely clueless as to what that meant he went off on me like a mad patriarch. Good thing I was raised by one, so I didn’t hesitate to stand my ground. He was red in the face pissed just like a Tea Partier screaming “don’t you love your country? What you do you mean cities don’t feed people!? Why don’t you just SHUT UP!”

I’ve lived on and worked by, the Great Lakes, lived on the high plains, the desert and in the high back country of the Rocky Mountains, and I have watched all of it over the course of my life, decline. Global Climate change came as no surprise to me. I have since given up trying to preach about the issue. No one who doesn’t want to hear will hear. Some may wake up, but watch the brouhaha that will happen when the mass of urban humanity wakes up violently when it is even more too late than today.

I have this image of myself in my dreams, sitting up high on a mesa on the western slope of Colorado filming the mass migration coming from California after the last denier uses the last drop of fresh water to irrigate his or her front lawn; Millions of people leaving their dead “paradise” thinking that anyone else could possibly want them in their backyard. Because of growing up in abuse, I’ve learned to simply walk away if the voice inside of me says, “Get the hell away.” I listen to the voice that says, “Danger, danger, Will Robinson”. People entrenched in their deluded mentally constructed worlds are very dangerous.

I became involved in the homesteading movement when I learned more about our food system. Having roots in Iowa, and “vacationing” there growing up, I watched our farms that had kitchen gardens, pigs, chickens, cows, and usually several different kinds of grains, turn into fields of mono-crops. Again, the aquarium hobby related. Spraying and pumping out diesel exhaust producing more and more toxins, farmers going broke and being kicked off the land, no family farms, nothing but fields of feed corn.

I received a Master’s Degree in a seminary during the peak of the farm crisis. I also worked with ranchers in the high country at the same time. That changed me. I went from being involved in the “what” of the issues, to the suffering being caused “by” the issues. I watched, like many of you, as thousands of farmers were forced off the land by the green revolution. I presided over a funeral where the deceased, having lost precious ranch land due to a bankruptcy, and who lost his wife at the same time through a divorce, drove down a canyon, tried to persuade her to come back, when rejected stopped at a liquor store and on the way home, unloaded a shotgun into his face. This was during a time when Colorado was seeing huge increases in the development of feedlots and plummeting beef prices.

Our capitalist system of greed has completely run over and destroyed the humanity of being human. Industrial civilization has put in place the proper infrastructure – essentially since WWII-, necessary to keep us in our places , to commodify everything, including the people whom the system is supposed to serve, and built the most horrific monolithic consumption machine our Patriarchal masters could envision. The colossus has taken a life of its own. It is too big to control, and any glitch in the machine will mean its catastrophic collapse and with it, the demise of us all. Even in the best scenario, even if the system didn’t collapse, we will slowly and painfully die off because our habitat – the aquarium – will be rendered all used up and not fit for life.

I wanted to say at this point that I don’t think that humanity is good at heart. But pondering that more I think that is wrong. I think that un-awakened people are not good at heart. I think that portions of our society (namely the patriarchs that built the industrial civilization colossus and convinced us of its virtues) are seriously, mentally ill. But because of the power they derived from their sociopathy, we have come to admire and emulate them as it being a virtue. I don’t think life among humans is exceptionally beautiful, however. I think too many put on a face or an act – be it the positive psychology movement, spirituality, fundamentalism and being saved – and try to convince themselves that it is. In my world, that is simply delusional. Nature is beautiful, humanity destroyed it. It’s too late, it’s too far gone. The time to resist was yesterday. The filters on the aquarium can’t keep up and there is no one to change them out and keep the system clean and inhabitable. After all, the temperature rises and the chaos in the weather patterns we see today, are happening because of emissions put into the atmosphere 40 YEARS AGO!! Imagine 40 years hence! In practically every human encounter in my life with people in supposed positions of power (parents, employers, religious leaders, etc.), I have always met with abuse coming from a patriarchal mindset seeking to control others so the ego can retain its existence. That is the poison that eats us as a species daily. That is why this will not and cannot change.

As a result of all of this, the fish are swimming upside down, and quite literally, the sea stars are melting. Now it is the time to simply live, or not live. Death is death no matter when or how. Can you not justify suicide today? Why would ethics today forbid it? Why would we even care? There is no purpose on this planet save to have lived. Our insanity destroyed the playground. 51 years of hell. Kurt Cobain sang to the effect: “All we are is all alone”…. He wasn’t wrong. Abuse of me, abuse of the poor, abuse of women, genocide, the abuse of the land base, abuse of diversity… A total culture and societal structure based on fear and abuse has led us to the brink. “What a long strange trip it’s been”. This is not the mark of a sane and intelligent species. It is more akin to a bacterium in a petri dish on the verge of catastrophic collapse. Blindly consuming its food source (or in our case, energy source), with no thought to its ultimate consequence it will unconsciously run right off a cliff. One big difference though, is that we created religion and a manifest destiny to help lock us into this death spiral in the name of our vast delusional superiority.

The last stage of grief is acceptance. I lived through all of the different stages of the grief process from about the age of 10. In fact, so much of my life could simply be a long drawn out sense of realizing that, as the song from YES goes, “This life’s not for living, its for fighting and for wars. No matter what the truth is, hold on to what is yours…” When one tries to live a life of altruism and compassion, and the whole of your species spits back into your face, you stand on the outside looking in, seeing the ridiculousness for what it is. Eventually, you become a different person. The rage (which I have been full of most of my life) subsides, you detach, and you become quiet. You see it all as a mirage. As it has become worse and the futility realized… I have become… quiet.

I got into the homestead movement, because I still thought that living as an example would help to save the world. I worked brutal hours; first turning a suburban home into a Dervaes style urban farm, and then building our JAZ Farm (www.jazfarmblog.com). I was hoping, like Dr. McPherson, that if I really showed the world how one could live with comfort, dignity, and harmony with nature, that everyone would enthusiastically follow me down the yellow brick road, dancing to the tune of the Pied Piper (to mix my story lines a tad).

Most of the response has been incredulous. Of course, my friends and family think it is great, but for acquaintances that are not as close, most of it was, like the sound-bites in the media, a flash in the pan. “Oh that is so cool, I really wish I could do something like that”, they’d say, and then it would fade. Invitations to come and help are met with excuses. Now I hope it is simply my hobby farm with my few enthusiastic friends who do get it. Seeing it for the life line it can be for us, if we simply do the work.

So while I have never really had to get to the point of acceptance over the finitude of the human dilemma (we are all going to die it’s simply a matter of when and how), I had to grieve over the futility of my efforts to really make a difference. Somehow, like I am sure with Guy, and my permaculture friends, and my doomer friends, and those who simply want to scream from the rooftops, we wanted to do something to make a difference. Chris Hedges commented about his activism that he wasn’t necessarily protesting against and calling out fascists thinking he was going to defeat them, but simply because they are fascists. A greater description of acceptance is hard to find. As Richard the Lionheart said to his brother Jeffery in The Lion in Winter, “When the fall is all there is… how you fall matters.” Acceptance. Personal meaning in the face of futility. “All alone, is all we are.”

The grief came from having to accept the fact that my dream of bringing the world around is dead. When you come from a helping profession, awakening to the fact that you can’t do anything of substance to turn the Titanic and knowing it is going to sink no matter what you do, is the experiencing of a death. It is the death of a purpose. It is the death of who you thought you were. It is the acceptance of knowing you were right all along and not being able to take egoic pride in being so prescient. It is a loss of life; YOUR life. All that you ascribed meaning to, like a soap bubble…. Pop! Gone.

I went through this sense of futility and grief at the same time that I was building out the farm’s infrastructure. I found my sense of enthusiasm beginning to wane mostly out of a sense of futility. Physically, I am a pretty strong male (think big ass defensive lineman). I also was able to summon up a tremendous amount of drive, mentally, to get me past the physical pain involved in getting things done. My self-imposed timelines were met and we are now on the verge of planting out over half an acre of organic vegetables. JAZ Farm lives.

Here is what happened to me during the acceptance phase. I lost the drive. I lost the mental toughness that drove me to work to exhaustion. Every time I told myself that I had to get my ass in gear to get this or that done, a little voice in the back of my head said, “Why?” “None of what you are doing matters.” “Who cares if the pig pen doesn’t get built?” That little voice rendered me – to what I would have considered in my life about others- a sniveling, weak minded, wimp. I spent days staring at my navel, not caring what happened. I spent weeks in depression thinking that I so eagerly went about this quest and it now being for nothing. My inner voice said, “The world is ending, humanity is mentally ill, and you my friend, just broke your body and turned your hips to dust, because you thought you were going to be the climate change messiah who led everyone to the promise land.” Grief: that person died. I have been holding vigil for him during the Polar Vortex winter of our discontent.

So from this depression came my previous two essays on NBL: Life is Different and What Is Your Calligraphy? Not because I wanted to continue my pontification, but like The President of the Galaxy in “A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” when looking for the answer to the great question and didn’t get it, said, “I think I did kind of a lot to get here…now I’m going to have to go figure out something else for my whole life to be about”. My life lost its meaning. I had to figure it out. I think maybe I have. Short answer: There doesn’t have to be any meaning. In fact, searching for meaning may be synonymous with pain.

Ponder on this statement: “Nothing really matters, and then again, so what if it did?” What really matters? If you sit down right now and ask yourself that, you may come up with something that your whole life can be about after you have come to see that what you thought you were going to be has died. Resurrect yourself like the Phoenix. How does one answer the question, “Who Am I?”

I found that the answer to that question was quite simple: No one. The world is too big and the damage so deep that I realized that I am no one. I am not the climate change, pure living, watch me and emulate me and change the world with me messiah. Maybe I am still Morpheus, getting people to take the red pill and then not getting invited to parties anymore. Fine. But if not…. fine! You are not your life. You are the eyes that the earth sprouted to look around with for awhile. The end. As I once heard a fellow astronomer say, “If you just leave Hydrogen and a little Lithium alone for long enough, it will eventually sing opera.”

The farm is still mine and the love of growing and harmony with nature is still in my blood and bones. It simply doesn’t have to be the bright light shining on a hill any longer. In fact, given the impending mass migration from the desert southwest, perhaps some anonymity isn’t a bad thing.

A wonderful friend uses the phrase: Ima grow food ‘til I can’t. To which I morphed that into “I’m going to plant ‘til I can’t”. It is a theme that awaits you on the other side of grief: That all there is in life, really, is just you being conscious. The only thing you can say about this existence is “I am”. That’s it. There is nothing else. So what do you do? I can say that for me, it is going through a conscious walking away from my species. While I share the same physical shape and needs, I don’t identify with the un-awakened creatures that have infested this place, largely only using their lizard brain. It is a mental evolution, a passing through the thin membrane between living in industrial civilization and trying to shake that sticky filth off. It is the final scene in a movie when the main character looks back on his home, his city, his country – in this case- his species, then rights himself in the saddle and slowly rides into the gray mist, never looking back, knowing that leaving is a death, and continuing to ride away, is rebirth.

In the past year, I mentally sat myself into the saddle. I am riding into the mist. I have left a life behind that says, “You need to be an activist. You MUST be involved! If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem, and all that tripe.” I have watched that part of me die. I have grieved that I couldn’t have helped more. But it is dead. I am not looking back over my shoulder thinking that maybe I could just go back. Go do a little bit more. Others may take that path because of course, fascists are fascist, and maybe some find them a fun prey to hunt. Whatever works for them. Acceptance is an understanding and internalizing of the futility of it all; that you are only really doing it…for yourself.

“I’m going to plant ‘til I can’t” If people want to be involved, ok. If not, ok too. My species is beyond help because of the power elite. All I can do is do something I love; that feels spiritual and meaningful – even if it isn’t. For me, it means loving the metamorphosis of seeds and the peace of farm animals. It won’t save the world, but it will keep me from committing suicide. The illness of humanity is too great for me to do anything about. It is simply too big. Others will say, “That if we all work together then….”, “There is a great awakening coming and we’ll all ascend together” and of course, “People like you are the problem,” “Oh you’ve just given up so I guess the oppressors win,” etc, etc,etc. The mysterious rider slowly rides into the sunset. He fades into the Nexus, awakens from the Matrix and goes on to do….? Nothing in particular. I’ll probably just keep chopping wood and carrying water, collecting eggs, and Plant ‘til I Can’t.

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What Is Your Calligraphy?

This is an essay I posted on a climate change blog I follow.  This year for Thanksgiving, instead of sharing what it is you have to be thankful for, ask one another…. what is your calligraphy?  It could be quite a conversation starter.

This is likely to be my only post to the group. I am more of an observer and I have kind of made my peace with so much of what we talk about here. I will always be reading and watching in the background because the articles and information are most often fact based and not available through too many other venues. That being said, I’d like to offer an alternative to the anger and futility that we collectively seem to be throwing around so often (and perhaps some reasons why). It is just my two cent as an observer. Nothing I say matters. As you will see… I don’t think much of what we collectively say matters either. I hope that some will understand that I see this as a positive.

Human beings love to be voyeurs. We love to see an “other” that has done something bad or horrible. We rubber neck at traffic accidents, we gasp at the corrupt behavior of politicians and religious leaders. We, in almost self-righteous indignance, thump our chests and exclaim, “oh my how awful” or “oh my what horrible people, group, or event, that is.” We love to be offended. We seem to need an objectified “other” to make us feel as though we are superior. In short, our egos need to be fueled constantly and we spend an immense amount of time and energy trying to portray ourselves in certain ways to the outside world. We need an object for our fear. We need it… to make us feel as though we are somehow, special.

The movie, HERO, with Jett Li, contains one of the most awesome archery attacks of all time. The conquering army stands at the ready. Archers by the hundreds are drawn and await the order to loose their arrows. Standing in between the armies is a Buddhist Temple who’s Zen practice is the art of Calligraphy. They do calligraphy in the spirit that Buddhist monks create sand Mandalas. The art, itself, is a meditation. When the art is complete, it is then disposed of as a mindfulness practice reminding the practitioner that nothing is permanent.

The master and the students know that they are about to be wiped out in the impending arrow attack and there is no way to escape. Many of the students begin to panic, showing that many are still on the path and have not yet become completely detached. Physical suffering and pain and death still terrifies them as it does us, especially in the west (We think that we are somehow MORE special). After all, we think there is so much to live for – that we must somehow accomplish things (Like any of it really matters). Many of the students want to try to run away (There being nowhere to run that could actually save them). There is no escape from the reach of the arrows. Death is certain. The master calms his students and says something to the effect: We will stay here and do our Calligraphy. We may die, but in the end they will see how well we did our Calligraphy (completely my words but the intent of the speech is there).

The arrows are loosed. The CGI creates this cloud of arrows in the sky which is a truly amazing sight (I’m an archery coach so please forgive my bias). The next scene shows the arrows crashing through the paper walls of the temple – students are struck and are dying while they continue to do their calligraphy. In the end, all die, including the master.

I am going to argue here that we doomers and collapsitarians are dealing with as much egoic self as the traffic rubber-neckers. If we take as a premise of what we know about this world, that there is not much time left on this planet, then all we are talking about is irrelevant. We have the Fukushima event that could make our demise a very near term event. Or, the triggered feedback loops in the environment could make it a very near term but maybe a bit longer term – near term – event. In any “event” our fate is sealed. Why then do we continue on in this group the way we do? I think, to some extent , we are as voyeuristic as those reading the tabloids (and please, all of you looking for reasons to get pissed – I am including myself here! Looking in a mirror is an uncomfortable proposition that’s why we always want to look out a window instead).

One group contends that everything is doomed and there is nothing we can do. Another says, “Well, we may be doomed but if we smoke this hopium pipe that has never worked in the past, then all of these great things will happen.” Hyper-spiritualists say, “There is a great awakening happening and it is going to save us” (not sounding all that dissimilar to the 2nd coming, but they’d never admit it).

The People’s Front of Judea (Monty Python) thinks they are the morally superior purists in their doomer prophecies but the Judean People’s Front yells HERECTIC, HERETIC! “Alternatives are the answer!” “NAY”, say the permaculturists, “growing stuff in a holier than thou way is the answer.” “NO NO NO! We must mob graze.” “No, NO!” says the other. “We will STONE you if you spread dung on fields using beasts.” Meanwhile, the millions of cars are still on the road. The factories are spewing poison into the air and other developing countries want to emulate the insanity that the United States has morphed into since its birth, thus sealing our fate. This, is Einstein’s definition of insanity.

Again, we love to grab our hair in shock and say, “Oh how awful”. We rend our garments in rage and say, “Someone MUST PAY!” “It’s men’s fault, its industrial civilization’s fault, its sin, its pestilence, its the Fall, its….” pick your blame game. Yes it’s awful. Yes it’s tragic. But life has always been so. The soldiers gassed in WWI may have not dealt with the end of the world but for everyone who died then, their world indeed ended on that field of slaughter. Pick your horror dujour. Anyone who dies from horrors, the end of the world was then and there. In fact, I imagine that if it ended their suffering, the mantra was, “good riddance.” Ever seen someone suffer and die from lingering cancer…. their world sucked completely and then they died. Many of them had to suffer and die alone.

Now its our turn. Our population is in overshoot and we have suddenly had to confront our egoic selves and admit that we weren’t the smartest folks on the planet after all. Death is coming like it comes for everyone. So here is where I ask the main question in this essay:

What is your Calligraphy?

We all die. It is simply a matter of when and how. Knowing that, how will you live out the rest of your time?

Will you live the remainder of your time in freak out mode? Does watching in horror fulfill your life’s dreams? Knowing that the fate is sealed, will you now look into the mirror, look at yourself, realize that happiness has always come from within?

What do you have in your life that will allow you to let go of the horrors? What do you have in your life and in your singular self that can give you inner peace knowing that no matter what happens in this world, you can go out in peace and still feeling tranquil? If there is not that in your life, then I assert that nothing we are doing is anymore productive and helpful for humanity than the mass riots we see time and time again on the news forever being put down by militarized police.

Have you developed an inner centering that could allow you to simply let the world fall apart around you? Could you sit at your calligraphy knowing that your death is imminent and be at peace with it? In light of our world and all that may befall us, developing that sounds like the only noble goal. The only way to live. Never has it been different than thus. Only our delusion has made it so.

So what is your Calligraphy? I’d love to know.

Here is mine:

I love star-gazing with my telescope. I love gazing up millions of lightyears away knowing that the galaxies I am seeing probably harbor life. I love contemplating the true meaning of infinity.

I love target archery. It clears my mind and makes me achieve singular focus (and yes I have read and re-read, Zen in the Art of Archery)

I love working in my gardens and on my homestead. Being amongst my animals and plants connects me with the energy that is reality. Nature is the only conscious being on earth. We are nature… we are consciousness.

I love to cook.

I love all to do all of the above alone. I love to do all of the above with my family. Both are beautiful.

If the earth is going to reclaim it’s health by getting rid of us because we were stupid, then I think I can do one or all of those things listed above while the brimstone of our ignorance comes crashing down like a cloud of arrows. If the earth folds up, if the universe reclaims this space in the cosmos for better purposes, then I for one will do what I think the small voice inside of me is calling me to do: Practice my calligraphy, conquer my fear, and be at peace.

Thanks for letting me indulge with this. I hope it creates a useful avenue for dialogue. I will be here reading, but I am going to go create my Mandala. Peace.

Some Fun and Inspirational Pictures

I blew off digging postholes today due to the wind and rain.  The contractors came today to give us bids on the doors and house painting.  Once this is done the house will be watertight and the major projects will be completed.  It has been a year since we started the bidding process on the farm.  What a tremendous amount of work we have done since that time!

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And just to insert my own sense of sarcasm and cynicism:

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I Guess Wall Street Agrees: “Pursue an agriculture degree, and you’ll be rich.”

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

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Published: Friday, 4 Oct 2013 | 9:55 AM ET

By:  | CNBC Producer

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.

David Jones | E+ | Getty Images

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)

Play Video
Rogers: ‘I Know It’s Going to End Badly’
Investor Jim Rogers explains why he’s not investing in U.S. stocks right now.

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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This is Very Bad News

WE HAVE INDEED LOST OUR MINDS!!!  IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE THAT WE ARE GOING TO LOSE CLOSE TO 100,000 FARMERS AND RANCHERS BY 2020 OUR MORAL COMPASS HAS INDEED BEEN BROKEN.  THIS MEANS DIRECTLY THAT THE DIRECTION IN AGRICULTURE POLICY WILL BE TO MORE BURNING OF FUEL, MORE IMPORTS, LOSS OF TOPSOIL, LOSS OF DIVERSITY, LOSS OF SPECIES, LOSS OF TRADITION AND KNOWLEDGE…. IN SHORT… THE END.  WE ARE EXPECTED TO RUN OUT OF PHOSPHOROUS BY 2020, A KEY COMPONENT OF INDUSTRIAL FERTILIZER…. THEN WHAT?  AMMONIA BASED FERTILIZER IS LARGELY BASED ON NATURAL GAS AND THAT IS IN DECLINE.  THEN WHAT?  WE ARE APPROACHING PEAK OIL SO SHIPPING FOOD FROM OVER SEAS (ONE OF THE BIGGEST PRODUCERS OF LETTUCE – OF ALL THINGS – IS PRODUCED BY CHINA!)  THEN WHAT?  A REPORT WAS PUBLISHED ON CNBC RECENTLY THAT SAID THE WORLD WILL BE TAPPED OUT OF RESOURCES BY 2030!!  RIGHT IN LINE WITH MIT’S LIMITS TO GROWTH…. THEN WHAT?
 
ANSWER:  WE NEED TO REVERSE THIS TREND.  WE NEED TO PUT PEOPLE BACK ON THE LAND AND TEACH THEM HOW TO GROW FOOD, WE NEED TO ENGAGE IN ROTATIONAL GRAZING, ORGANIC SOIL BUILDING AGRICULTURAL PRINCIPLES AND DE – URBANIZE OUR LANDSCAPE!!!  SUBURBIA IS THE BIGGEST WASTE OF RESOURCES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!!  WHAT WOULD YOU DO, IF YOUR CITY COULDN’T GET FOOD TO IT?  THINK ABOUT IT….. THIS IS REALLY BAD.

Is Your Job About to Become Career Roadkill?

Seven Jobs That Might Disappear Soon

By Dona DeZube, Monster Finance Careers Expert

You don’t need a crystal ball to know that in the not-too-distant future, advances in technology and changing consumer preferences will crush the careers of some people who are very happily employed at this very moment. You can just look at Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

If you’re in one of these seven shrinking jobs, you can either start looking now for a way to transfer your skills and knowledge into a new job, or tough it out and hope the guy next to you gets the ax instead of you:

Gaming Cage Workers

Even though there’s probably a new casino opening near you, demand for gaming cage workers is actually expected to decline by an unlucky 13 percent between 2010 and 2020, the BLS says.

Since gamblers are using self-service machines to buy and cash in chips instead of going to your cage, a better bet for your career is in a field with a more optimistic employment outlook: healthcare. A community-college course in medical billing should help you learn the medical terms you’ll need to know to land a job as a billing clerk — a field projected to grow 20 percent by 2020, according to the BLS.

Auto Insurance Claims Adjusters

Cars are getting safer, which is good news for drivers, but bad news for auto insurance claims adjusters who have fewer accident claims to work. The BLS projects an 8 percent decline in jobs for auto claims adjusters between 2010 and 2020.

If you believe global climate change will lead to a continued uptick in natural disasters, a shift into property and casualty claims adjusting might be a good move for you. Look for opportunities to cross-train via your current employer, or seek out online or community-college classes to pick up knowledge of other insurance lines and the industry’s popular software programs.

You can also boost your employability as a property and casualty adjuster by picking up a bachelor’s degree in a related field like engineering or construction, or by acquiring knowledge of a specialty insurance niche like green building or art.

Floral Designers

Every time you buy flowers in the grocery store instead of ordering an arrangement from a florist, you contribute to the decline in demand for floral designers.

With the industry projected to lose 6,200 jobs between 2010 and 2020, up the chances of hanging on to yours by staying abreast of current trends, earning industry certifications and expanding your skill set intospecial-events coordination, says Thomas Shaner, executive director of the American Institute of Floral Designers. You could also consider teaching flower-arranging classes to all those people buying cut flowers.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Farmers !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Between 2010 and 2020, some 96,100 farmers and ranchers will go out of business, the BLS says. “As land, machinery, seed, and chemicals become more expensive, only well-capitalized farmers and corporations will be able to buy many of the farms that become available,” the BLS predicts. “These larger, more productive farms are better able to withstand the adverse effects of climate and price fluctuations on farm output and income.”

Farmers can either fight ‘em by niche marketing (think organic produce grown for local restaurants) or join ‘em by moving into farm management for an agribusiness corporation or, for those who like the business side of farming, agriculture consulting. If you’re up for a completely new career, consider agricultural appraising, says Cheryl L. Cooley, communications manager for the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers.

Power Plant Operators

If you turn off the lights when you leave the room, you’re killing jobs. Along with energy efficiency, new power plants requiring fewer employees to run them will lead to a 3 percent decline in the number of power plant operator jobs between 2010 and 2020, the BLS says.

You can try to switch over to water plant management, but the pay over there is worse (the annual median salary for water plant operators is $41,780 compared with $65,280 for power plant operators). Nuclear power plants are where the money is ($76,590 median annual salary), and new nuclear power facilities have gained approval.

Loan Interviewers and Clerks

Need a mortgage? There’s an app for that, and it’s putting loan interviewers and clerks out of work. The BLS projects a decline of 5,700 jobs for loan interviewers and clerks between 2010 and 2020.

With the real estate market on the upswing, a move into real estate sales might work if you can afford to live off your savings while you establish your real estate business.

The same skill set you use in collecting and analyzing would-be borrowers’ financial information would also come in handy at an IRS job, while your sales skills could apply in an insurance sales job.

Semiconductor Processors and Electronic Equipment Assemblers

You can blame it on the robots, efficiency experts or offshoring, but whichever you choose, there are still going to be 14,200 jobs gone from these two fields between 2010 and 2020, the BLS says.

Cover your assets by switching into an assembly job or fabrication job in a more prosperous sector ofmanufacturing, like aircraft products and parts. If you can handle the math, go back to school for an associate’s degree and become an electronic engineering technician. Not only will you be more employable, but you’ll boost your paycheck as well. The median salary for electrical and electronics engineering technicians is $56,900, according to the BLS.

The Truly American Philosophy That We All Seem To Have Forgotten

We live in a culture today that makes feigned reference to the rugged individualist when in fact our country wasn’t built on the Marlboro man cowboy fantasy but as a nation of communal barn builders where neighbor helped neighbor.   Our politicians implore us all to take personal responsibility for our lives and if somehow  we are not successful that we are to “blame ourselves” (to quote Allen West).  There is a philosophical war that has been fought in this country since before the civil war and it has to do with the nature of humanity and how we care for one another.  The Puritans evidently came to this country to live an even more oppressive life than they were allowed to live in Europe.  My grandparents were hellfire reformed church preachers.  As today, they believed that Man is wretched and we are all scum in the eyes of God.  Some are ordained to be saved, others to be damned.  As this theology of its originator, John Calvin, has morphed and been perverted, it has become the foundation of a vast swath of our American culture to justify greed.   The true American philosophers, however, were those we called the Transcendentalists;  The most prominent and well known (at least by name) were Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.  I think that if we were to understand and take to heart more of what these great thinkers espoused and how they stood in defiance of inequality, oppression and greed, we would be able to have a more intelligent conversation of what it means to be free.

Too often today, Calvinism forms the basis of religious and political thought – that capitalism is the measure of human worth and that you can know who is divinely chosen by their wealth.  Those who believe this, even though they don’t even know anything about the Calvinist origins of their thinking, have chosen a pseudo-intellectualist and sociopathic author, Ayn Rand, as their champion.  If one stands against this, the quick McPhilosophy or mindless response is to label someone a socialist (most these days not having one clue as to what that really means).

If we could resurrect the deep thought of those who taught that all people are one and that no one is superior in any fashion to another, perhaps, like Thoreau, we would spend more time caring for one another and sit amongst our bean fields contemplating the deeper thoughts of life.  Indeed, it seems likely that we would learn to sit still and quit running east looking for a sunset.  Our country is badly off course and inequality of wealth is being hoarded at the very top as though they did anything legitimate to earn it.  We don’t need to look to Stalinist Russia for a scapegoat.  We simply need to understand that there is another way of looking at true American Freedom and what that really means.  Our philosophers are still  here and now, unfortunately, to hear them requires that one put down the remote and read.  If we agree that America has lost its way and that our founders never wanted us to become an empire in the way the Romans, The Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Soviets and the English all have tried and failed, the Transcendentalists of our own land and our own history point us in the direction that could restore us to a peaceful and pastoral land.

When you have some time, this is a 6 part series on Emerson.  The Calvinist/Baptist offshoots all have the megaphone of these ridiculous “church” monstrosities that have sprung up in the past 30 years.  Because we don’t value philosophy in our education departments anymore and religion is too concerned whether or not we are descended from apes, the greatest minds this country has ever produced are being lost in the cacophony of nonsensical noise we call consumerism.

Think local, think community.  Think peace.  Re-learn how to share and care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QROVtOZNv_8&list=PL143E5856AADE6EB3