Re: Car living: how to prepare for the future in the US

Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
Russell.Martin@xxxxxxx wrote:
Kamal R. Prasad wrote:
Straydog wrote:
On Mon, 1 May 2006, Russell.Martin@xxxxxxx wrote:

rrc wrote:
Straydog wrote:
[snip]

Once again you are revealing your ignorance of American
geography. We've been over this before, so your ignorance
is now willful. Large areas are desert and bare rock
mountains that can not be farmed. Parts that can and
are presently being farmed with irrigation are ecological
disasters in the making, or financial disasters when an
extended dorught hits, as has happened periodically in the
past 1000 years (that we know about). As a climatologist

they are ecological disasters because of bad farming techniques -which
can be corrected for the better.

How? They disasters are from irrigation, specifcally leaching of
selenium from the soil and depletion of ground water reserves.
Plants won't grow without water, there isn't enough precipitation
in these regions to grow most plants without irrigation, ergo
irrigate and deal with the ecological problems or starve. Can
things be done better? Maybe, but not without investments
that even present large scale farmers can't afford, and such
approaches will be out of the budget of a subsistence farmer.
You are just theorizing with no knowledge of the facts.


and regional climate center contact for the National Drought
Monitor (look at http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/drmon.gif for
the present drought situation), I'm familiar with this subject.
Have you ever heard of the Anastasi? They were well

Anastasia?

Anastasi. IIRC Anastasia was a Russian princess.

No -I didn't.

adapted to an agricultural existence in the Southwest, but
present thinking suggests their civilization was forced into
decline by drought.

As a matter of fact. I happened to read a WSJ article,

Get a real source on the subject. WSJ reporters, like
most, really don't have a clue about many subjects they
are forced to write about. Last month we had a speaker
talking about the abysmal (her word) state of mathematics
reporting in the popular press. Ag reporting is also best
left to someone with expertise. I wonder when the last
time a reporter for WSJ was even on a working farm.
Then you have editors, who according to the speaker
have the last shot at mangling the facts. I suspect WSJ
editors make it to working farms less often than reporters.

that but
for hispanics, most of the US's agricultural land would have been lying
waste.

Some of it would, some of which is an ecological disaster
in progress (check out selenium poisoning of soils; to save
you some work, here's a couple of things that google popped
up with on the topic: http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj07/bauer.htm
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesterson_wildlife_refuge ).
The largest portion would still be worked as it is now. One
person can, with modern methods, work 700 hectares of row
crops. I know because I talked with a guy who does when
he came here to speak. He works land about 50 miles west
of where I grew up and east of where I went to grad school.
Of course, such methods only work in some types of farming
in some places.

Not that you don't have farmers, but the population is greying

The whole population is greying. How is a population of
old people (as opposed to individual old people, some of
whom are in better shape than I) supposed to work
subsistence farms?


The article meant that the farmland would have been laid waste -on
account of lack of manpower, but for hispanics.

Yes, but my comment is to your plan to move large portions
of the U.S. population to subsistence farms and expect them
to make a living. Farming is hard work. I blew out a knee
just keeping my 1/4 acre yard in shape last summer. Growing
a few acres of veggies seems like a tall order for someone
older than I. Some people can do it. There was a documentary
on PBS about a guy who moved to Alaska when he was 50,
built a cabin and lived off the land for 30 years. I doubt if 300
million people can do that inside a generation without about
200 million of them starving. It took 100 years to go from a
mostly agrarian society to what we have today. How long do
you think it would take to go back? A first order estimate
based on the history of such large social changes would be,
say, 100 years.


and/or they can get higher paying jobs in cities where 1/2 the
population of the country now resides.

In large (but not total) part because many can't make a living
at the present farm prices. Look, I'm at an ag (among other
things) school. My office is on a floor with a bunch of crop
and soil scientists, and I attend a number of their seminars,
some (and some of the most interesting) of which are given
by working farmers. In addition, I grew up in a small town in
an agricultural state and had relatives (and my wife still has
relatives) who were farmers. My step father just retired from
the agrichemical business a few years ago. I'm saying you
don't know what you're talking about.

Recently, McCain made a
statement

Pleeaase. McCain is a politician. As a group they are
a less reliable source of information than journalists. ;-)

to a union workers' group that picking cabbage/lettuce pays
$50/hr -and these jobs go abegging and even more would have -but for
hispanics.

Hmm, then why are some Hispanics working for minimum
wage when they could be making almost 10 times that
much? Economics says that people ought to be flocking
to those higher wages, or don't you believe in your
elementary economics any more? ;-)


Not all jobs -but some of them probably pay well. It is not necessary
that americans will be flocking to jobs that pay well coz the working
conditions do matter. They have welfare and some other things to help
them out.

You need to become familiar with the new welfare laws.

I saw a CNN documentary (we get that channel in India) which talked to
an american farmer who said that

-wage paid by him to workers is 8.95/hr and for 9$/day -they get
eat-all-you-want
-if it weren't for hispanics, he would have a problem finding labour as
most americans are migrating to cities for easier jobs

And for better pay than a seasonal $9 per hour. If the farmer
would offer that pay year around, he might get more takers
among Americans, IMO, but since the work is seasonal one
can't settle and live in the place. It isn't just the pay rate or
the type of work that makes such jobs unattractive.

-that the work is v hard & demanding physically and that americans have
gone soft over the years as their economy has progressed

And you are working so hard typing at a keyboard?

-all of his workers come from mexico in spring and leave by fall -and
they carry a guest worker visa

Good for him.


This is some evidence that you have the farm -but not willing labour to
utilize it. In either case -if americans think that these people are a
burden on their country and at the same time do not wish to exploit
them -it should be pretty easy to cancel all visas and penalize
employers for hiring non-citizens.

That's what is supposed to happen now. Largely it doesn't
which disproves your thesis that it is "easy".



Oh, yeah, just wave the magic wand and...poof...we're all prosperous,
self-supporting farmers, healthy, well-fed, and with no worries, no
stress, no problems, and big smiles on our faces. And, the biggest smile
on Kamal's face because it was his idea.


The thing about really good ideas and their proponents is that they are
usually ahead of their time -and consequently mocked upon till the
world wakes up to its genuineness.

And the thing about silly ideas is that they are also
mocked. The trick is to tell the difference.

Yep.

There isn't a chance american labour
can compete with its 3rd world counterparts

Right, not if we a have a global laissez-faire system that
takes the entire world back to Dickensian conditions.


The system or the world around you is not the cause of the problem. The
problem lies with a lack of parity (thanks to the strong dollar policy
of the US govt) and a desire to take life easy by americans. For all
those who think they deserve a better living std or a decent paying job
that allows them to realize their american dream -I would like to know
what ENTITLES them to any of that?

What entitles you to what you have that poorer people than you
(and I supect there are a few billion of them; IIRC 2 billion people
earn $1 a day or less and I've never seen any of them posting
on Usenet, so my guess is you make more than that) don't have?

As you say it, most of your land is
not arable

You are now contradicting your earlier statement.
And unfortunately, much of the planet's land isn't arable.

[and this contradicts any notion of inheriting an ecological
footprint by accidemt].

The natural resources which the U.S. has, which are
considerable but do not included 100% arable land,
where inherited (after being stolen from the natives,
but I know of few places on earth which have not had
migrations displace previous populations and we can't
turn back the clock 10 millennia to right all past wrongs)
and form the basis of the prosperity we have today.
Read some history if you don't believe it. We didn't
make lumber, iron ore, coal, oil, etc. appear from thin
air.

If your country is as good or as bad as any
other 3rd world country in terms of resources/arable land etc.

Better than most actually.

and the
people of the country do not have special faculties to show incredible
productivity

Who sent men to the moon in under a decade? Who helped
rebuild the world after WWII? Who invented the Internet?
Who invented interchangable parts, the electric light, the
threshing machine, the cotton gin, the airplane, nylon, etc.?
Last I heard it was Americans, or do you have some
revisionist history the shows some Indian rather than Eli
Whitney invented the cotton gin?

-why would they deserve anything better than people
elsewhere?

One can argue that at some level morally we don't, in the
same way that one can argue that no rich person "deserves"
to be richer than anyone else. What's your solution, steal
from the rich and give to the poor? Will you can start by
giving the poor most of what you have?

-so you better give it a
try if and when your country becomes saddled with a lot more bills.
(Bills bloat the economy, making workers less competitive).

regards
-kamal

Maybe you should try. I get to pick the land, one acre,
no mule (a reference to the 19th century "40 acres and
a mule" for our non-American or poorly read American
lurkers :-) ). Maybe we can get PBS to make a mini-
series out of your attempt. They are presently running
"Texas Ranch House". We could propose "Death Valley
Subsistence Farm". :-) BTW the ranch on "Texas Ranch
House" is 10,000 acres, and it is uncertain whether they
will be able to make a go of it.


Death valley has v low humidity. Most of the agricultural land in India
experiences temperatures similar to death valley. About 600-800 million
people live in rural India and they can consider themselves fortunate
to own an acre of land and a pair of bullocks(no mules used here) -and
that suffices to survive. Something like 4 acres of land -will land
them in the category of the rural rich. If the crop fails -it leads to
a disaster and they commit suicide i.e. the state does not help them
with any type of insurance. If you observe what we manage to do with
agricultural land in India -you will realize it is NOT a silly idea.

regards
-kamal

See my comments above about a time frame. I have no
doubt that if the U.S. had stayed largely the agrarian
society that it was at the turn of the 20th century we would
be getting along. Speaking German or Japanese, but
getting along. Your idea is silly because it attempts to
turn back the clock in a time frame that is unworkable.
It may happen that the U.S. returns to an agrarian society.
If it happens slowy due to natural developments it could
work out. If it was to be forced upon us in a generation or
less, I think millions of people would starve. I'm sure that
would make certain people happy. I've never been pro-
famine, and I don't find that an especially moral point of
view myself.

Cheers,
Russell

.

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