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Date Posted: 08:47:24 05/27/08 Tue
Author: Lynx
Subject: Re: An Excellent Op-Ed
In reply to: EJetson 's message, "Re: An Excellent Op-Ed" on 08:04:45 05/27/08 Tue

>How much farmland in this country is sitting idle
>while farmers get paid NOT to grow anyting on it?

A lot, including some land that hasn't even been farm land in a long time, but I see that as a whole other issue.

The changing climate is really coming into play these days. Five years from now, the wheat belt is going to be substantially north of where it has been in our lifetimes. I was in West Texas a few weeks ago (ugh) and the wheat looked very poor. The bigger point here is that diesel is well over four bucks a gallon. Even with wheat bringing a higher price now, many farmers cannot afford to bring their crops in, and many have stopped growing wheat, because it's always an iffy crop anyway. (I am SO glad that our personal income is no longer dependent on wheat.) And, as the op-ed pointed out, future farming will have to be very hands-on, locally-based, and not at all dependent on fossil fuels.

Several months ago, Mega-Disasters on the History International channel focused on peak oil. They talked to many experts and, according to their construct, oil would have to reach eight dollars a gallon for civilization to pretty much fall apart completely. Nowadays, eight dollars a gallon doesn't seem like an impossibility, so it was very, very disturbing.

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