On the Farm

The "official" estimates are in, and it looks like the U.S. lost another three-quarters of a million jobs in March. Revised figures also show nearly that many were lost in February as well. Another million and a half people will now be drawing unemployment and hitting the streets, just since the end of January.

Heckuva job, unregulated free markets.

So what do you think the chances are that about half the people working in office cubicles and retail stores today will be working as farmhands and ranch hands in the not-too-distant future, say within five years? I'd expect such jobs to pay room and board and maybe a couple hundred bucks a month.

Since "agribusiness" will be the next domino to topple, going the way of the hedge fund and the wooly rhinoceros, I'd say the chances of that happening are about 100 percent.

Factory-style agriculture with its enormous petroleum "inputs," mostly fertilizers and and pesticides, is economically and ecologically unsustainable, and won't survive the second decade of the new century. It's been a horribly destructive set of practices, contributing to the epidemics of diabetes and obesity through the imposition of overdoses of high-fructose corn syrup on the American diet, as well as leading to crop choices that make money for big, subsidized farmers and corporations, but make absolutely no environmental sense at all (rice and cotton in California!).

So good-bye ConAgra and ADM, hello again family farms, complete with well-conditioned young farmhands. Go organic if you want to make some money, and hide your number one cash crop in the corn rows. Remember, pesticides suck; compost happens.