Hoophouse Building and Jim Rogers

We've been spending most of our time recently putting up a hoophouse to provide winter housing for our laying hens and a space for starting seedlings in the spring.  Here are a few pictures from the process. Thanks to our friends Steve, Dave, and Bill for all the help.  

And here's an interesting snippet from Steve Forbes' interview with the renowned investor Jim Rogers, which feels particularly relevant for our farm and our school.  

Rogers: ...Steve, you should start an agriculture magazine. Because the profits in agriculture –

Forbes: Share with us the observation you made about somebody majoring in public relations and agriculture.

Rogers: Well done. More people in America study public relations than study farming. We have no farmers. You went to Princeton; nobody you went to school with became a farmer. I went to Yale; nobody I went to Yale with became a farmer. The average age of farmers in America is 58 years old. In Japan, the average age is 66. In Australia, it’s 58. Hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers commit suicide every year. It’s a disastrous business. In the U.K., the highest rate of suicide is in agriculture. It’s been a horrible business for 30 years. Prices have to go up – have go to up a lot – or we’re not going to have any food at any price.

Unless you’re going to become a farmer.

Forbes: Then we truly starve. But you pointed out we have 200,000 PR graduates, 20,000 farmers coming out of our schools. And you have a wonderful phrase, “You can’t eat press releases.”

Rogers: That’s exactly right. You cannot eat press releases. It was actually 200,000 M.B.A.’s we have coming out. That’s even worse. We have more people doing M.B.A.’s than doing PR.

There’s going to be a huge shift in American society, American culture, in the places where one is going to get rich. The stock brokers are going to be driving taxis. The smart ones will learn to drive tractors so they can work for the smart farmers. The farmers are going to be driving Lamborghinis. I’m telling you. You should start Forbes Farming.

For the full interview, see http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2012/05/10/legendary-jim-rogers-brokers-going-broke-farmers-will-become-rich-very-rich/.