Lecture Idea.

I am a revolutionary, and farming is the natural starting point for the revolution I imagine, so I will talk about what can be done to revolutionize farming. Normally a revolutionary is seen as an attempt to over throw social order, but I only mean to suggest that I hope to fix a problem that is so systemic that to correct it would fundamentally change the way of life for farmers.

Humans do the most amazing things, but none is more important then the ways we make food. Doctors, Scientists, Politicians, Soldiers, Technicians, Lawyers, Bankers, Manufactures, Academics, Poets, Musicians, Bureaucrats, and Accountants. Though all of these things are amazing activities, none are more essential then the farmer. We can imagine a large society with out any particular one of these things, but the simple farmer is indispensable to civilization. The farmer is the foundation of civilization.

But maybe because he is the foundation, we place him at the bottom of society, and unfortunantly we do not often value that which is at bottom. We could imagine a world where all people would say in their hearts "If only I were lucky enough to be a farmer, to be one of the most important members of society." But that society is far from ours, in the modern world it is not good to be a farmer at all.

Look at the average age of an American farmer is 57, the young are not choosing to go into this field. And with good reason, a mid-western farm can produce $300 of corn per acre, but the cost of growing that corn is $375. After subsidies a small profit can be worked out, with luck maybe even enough to pay of the interest from the debt incurred in the purchase of the heavy machinery used to make the industrial yields possible....

(more later)