Globalization spreads to farming

[Deja Q]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/354/4650156.html

QUERENCIA, BRAZIL -- Josh Neusch is a modern-day settler in the new global economy.

Raised on a family farm in southern Minnesota, Neusch now owns 7,500 acres in the Mato Grosso state of Brazil, one of the planet's last great expanses of virgin farmland.

Last year, with the backing of his family and a farming partner from Illinois, the 22-year-old from Fairmont, Minn., bought land on the cheap. Very cheap: about $150 an acre, or a fraction of the cost of land in his native Martin County.

He paid for it in sacks of soybeans -- the currency of land in central-west Brazil.

His workers get by on little. Government bureaucracy has been tolerable. Best of all, he doesn't have to sweat the low-cost competition from South America.

He is the competition.

Mato Grosso, BrazilSome call it one of globalization's latest quirks...

More...

I wonder what the repukes are planning by setting up stories like this... devalue farming even more? Not to forget peak oil, so while he can gloat now, he'll be crying in less than a decade.

Doubly interesting, they use soybeans as currency down there. So that's why all the Atkins and other healthfood that uses soy products is so grossly expensive!! :eyes:


"In rural Minnesota, I see small towns dying, and in Brazil, I see new towns pop up every year," said Melby, who moved to Brazil two years ago in search of a farm.

And he's contributing to the problem, selfish cretin...

In Brazil, with its abundant cheap land and labor, the prevailing ethos is to clear ever more land, plant crops and increase production. South of the equator, it seems, there's more room to make mistakes.

I wonder how many precious rainforests are down there, and what will happen after all these mistakes are happily made... Not to forget devauling the industry and people in the process...

What will happen in the long run, even if peak oil wasn't a factor? The extermination of the farming industry in Minnesota and of the USA as a whole?

Neusch's Illinois-reared farm manager, the 25-year-old Stutzman, has spent even more time in-country than Neusch. He's heard all the stories, and he isn't fazed. He says there's only one thing he likes better in the States: "The roads."

The roads, great! That's another ploy the repukes always play on... (does he know Pawlenty wants to ruin (read: privatize) the road system while expanding an equally limited light rail system? Screw the environment, it's short term exploitation that's more important.

This whole article reeks of despicable rottenness...

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. Terminator genes have lots of potential for controlling problem population

It works like this: You give the starving people in X country some seeds. They plant the seeds, they get a crop, they eat.

But if they want another crop, they have to buy more seeds - those seeds only grow one crop, then their dead.

Good native, biscuit.
Bad native, no biscuit.