This year has seen a lot of the usual drama plastered all over the news. Civil unrest has cropped up in the various corners of Europe and Asia with even the old stalwarts like Hong Kong getting involved. The Police state in the US ebbs and flows around us. The Ebola outbreak in Africa got pretty nasty, and is still not contained. Then the usual media hype and pomp surrounding the mid term US elections got a lot of people riled up. It seems like a never ending onslaught of drama, bad news, and media storied about stuff that I want nothing to so with.
I want some good news. I want to hear that things are getting better.
If I turn to sources that I trust to keep me informed, sure enough, things are getting a lot better on a lot of fronts right now.
Scientists and entrepreneurs are hard at work making things that are bringing the world closer together. They are healing life threatening diseases, making toys and tools to make our lives easier, and generally making stuff better all around. We now know more about the human body, the world we live in, and the universe around us than we have ever known as humans.
This is awesome.
Since I was quite young I have seen the need to live in a self sustaining manner. I wanted to have a farm in the country and grow enough of my own food to take care of my family if there were ever any shocks to the food distribution systems. I also love the feeling of freedom that comes from not being beholden to someone else for my life and livelihood.. For many years however that dream eluded me.
Have you priced farms lately? It seems like unless you inherit the family farm or made millions in the tech bubble, there is no real good way to get into agriculture. The idea of carrying a multi million dollar mortgage doesn’t really appeal to me. Its the wrong direction of thought from being free. Since this was basically a pipe dream for most of my adult life, I put it aside and worked on building my businesses in such a way that I could take care of my family and hopefully find a way to get back to the land later in life.
About two years ago this all changed. I got my farm.
I didn’t do it by saving up the money, or by inheriting a farm. I did it by changing my idea of what a farm is and what a farm does. My farm now is a half acre in southern Utah, with another half acre next door that the neighbor lets me use.
Using new aquaponic technology, greenhouses, and a lot of sophisticated automation technology, we can do as much on this little plot of ground as many farmers can do with a lot more. See what I mean about technology making the world better?
Most of the technology that we are using didn’t exist five years ago. Much of the automation technology didn’t exist a year ago. Some of it we had to build from scratch and develop both hardware and programs for. One of my favorite parts of this is hooking up a new system, turning it on, and it actually working the way that I engineered it. That never ceases to amaze me.
We have certainly had our setbacks. Our main greenhouse was built and then destroyed last year. I am working on getting it back up right now. My goal is to have it fully operational again before the 1st of the year. Our crops this year were enough for us, but not enough to sell at market yet. Since this is just as much an educational process as an economic venture, that’s okay.
I get a lot of people asking me why I would go through all the work, expense, sleepless nights and sore muscles to build something like this. At current market prices the economics of small farms is barely profitable. Mine has been a money pit since I started.
To understand this, we have to look at some global trends.
Right now there are just over 7 billion people on earth. This is up from 6 billion just a few years ago. By 2050, even the conservative estimates put the population at over 9.5 billion. High estimates could be as high as 11 Billion. If Ebola wipes out significant swaths of the population in the next few years, it will still be somewhere around 8.7 billion.
To add to that, the total farmland available globally is shrinking at a rapid rate. Between desertification, and urbanization, it is estimated that the world looses about 100 million acres of cropland each year. Add to that number croplands that are forced to lie fallow due to regional drought, wars, lack of seed, fertilizer or equipment, and the numbers get pretty scary in a hurry.
What all that means is that the number of acres of farmland per person is going down at a rapid rate. In 1900 there was approximately 32 acres of farmland per person in the world. With advances in farming technology that was pushed down to about 12 by the late 1960’s. That number held fairly steady for a few decades as new farmlands were brought into production and crop technology has increased. Over the last 20 years however we have seen that drop to almost 7 acres per person. By mid century, that number is estimated to be around 4 acres per person. Some estimates are higher, others lower. But overall this is a crisis in the making.
All this looks at is global macro trends. This is not a look at things like wars, disease, famine, increases in shipping costs, or political tensions. This is just looking at best and worst case numbers of population vs croplands. Once you start to look at stuff like water availability, GMO issues and politics, things can start to look pretty scary. But all those things do is put additional pressure on the agriculture picture, not less.
Economics 101 – when supply decreases, but demand stays the same, prices increase. When supply is constant and demand increases, prices rise. When demand rises as supply decreases, prices rise significantly. This is a classic case of both declining supply and increasing demand happening at the same time.
Some of the worlds best and richest investors are quietly buying up all the available farmland and water supplies around the world in anticipation of this trend. I believe that the next group of billionaires the economy creates will be in agriculture. This is a huge trend, and getting in front of it could be the smartest thing that anybody does in their lives.
I have friends that have decided to leave the political and economic chaos of the US and have gone to South America to buy up farms and ranches there. If you are in a position to do so, let me know. We could do something together perhaps. For right now however what I can do is build out every available square foot I have into a high capacity automated aquaponic farm.
If you are interested in getting in front of these huge trends, lets talk. There are a lot of things that you can do to build out your own food security systems, or to leverage your skills and resources into a business. Whatever your abilities, there are ways to both prepare for, and profit from the coming crisis.
All things considered, life is getting a lot better in a lot of places and in a lot of ways. We just need to get on the right side of this technological advance in order to profit.