Jim Rogers, the bow tie-wearing fund manager who made George Soros a billionaire, thinks it’s time to get back to the land. Agriculture has “been a terrible business for 30 years,” he says in this CNBC Asia discussion of China’s stimulus package. “It’s about to be a fabulous business.”
Rogers points out that global food inventories are at their lowest levels in 50 years, farm production is being hurt by the credit crunch, and global warming could depress crop yields in the future.
He also delivers this distilled bit of wisdom: “The world is changing–it’s going from the money shufflers to the people who produce real things.” That’s a view we agree with, and though farming isn’t on our list of 10 hot careers, it’s part of the same broad trend.
Well, actually, being a farmer is Rogers’s number two career option. At the top of the list is “turning yourself into a 16-year-old Korean girl.” (Watch the clip.)
Tags: EMPLOYMENT
Mirrors my sentiment perfectly, a economy that’s lost it’s idenity to banks ,and shady business opportunitys will find itself under assualt by every criminal that seeks to steal with pen and paper.farming has become profitable,with a growing number of co-ops, organic farming is by far healther and should replace the mega farm. (worst souce of soil destruction ever)
about 30yrs ago i made a good living as a mechanic ,fixing cars,and trucks,some
farm equipment. i actually worked my way across the country fixing cars ,at truck stops. working in junk yards,striping wreaks for the owners. anywhere there was
a job.
it was possible to find work everywhere? i did a bit of everything roofing in amarillo tex. auto repair in san luis obipo.ca. contruction in ellenville wash.
i am a believer that this economic disaster will change a lot.
forget wall street, and everyone of the losers who caused this.
a job is a job..
This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If you want to be a farmer then you have to shell out hundreds of thousands for a small farm. Good luck trying to get the big agribusinesses to buy your crops unless you are willing to sell for a price where you won’t break even (thanks to the Republicans changing the farm bill in 98). You’ll have to rely on government subsidies.
At best you can join a co-op and subsist off the barter system and hope to get by until the second Republican depression ends.
there are plenty of threats against farmers,
just google HR 875, the whole animal rfid debacle, and monsanto,
and the and running a small scale sustainable farm requires a second job almost certainly.
“there arent any farmers left” because of agribusiness
this guy doesnt know what he is talking about
Of course, farming is not a small business any more. Mostly.
And, of course, JR speaks from his own perspective as an investor.
Personally, I have not yet decided whether to buy physical gold and agricultural commodities or just gold (to wait until that banking/credit crisis stuff has passed). JR thinks the future lies in agriculture. In the long term, that may be true. But in the short term I see major problems related to meat consumption. With the US falling into a deep recession, there is not much money left for buying meat. Additionally, the CO2 production cap could lead to higher meat consumer prices — thereby additionally reducing meat demand (which actually would be a sane and fast and simple thing to reduce CO2 emissions and energy/oil waste). Further, meat consumption in Asia could go back big time as re-export driven and well paid jobs get lost. Additionally, I iust recently read some study that shows that urbanization has a negative effect on meat consumption in emerging countries due to the low wages and high living costs…