Want to Make More than a Banker? Become a Farmer!

Friday, July 29, 2011

Why I’m Telling My Son to Become a Farmer

This was the lead in title to a series of financial articles I received recently about our current economic woes, big business crashes and the coming crisis for small town America. NOW – I don’t claim to be a whiz in the financial world. I, like most of you, has struggled and lived through the last few years and am skeptical about almost everything coming out of D.C., the financial community and the main stream media. But, one thing struck me. It was the number of articles regarding agricultural commodities and the increases in the Ag industry.

At the beginning of the newsletter, before Andy Hecht, Editor of Trade Hunter launched into his findings and solutions for riding out the next wave of troubled financial waters he wrote this…

Dear Reader,

My son recently graduated from college. He and his friends are now looking for jobs. Anyone who saw Friday’s employment report knows that the job market is tight in the U.S. The outlook is even bleaker for recent college grads. Today, there are more biology and business majors tending bars and restocking shelves at Target than ever before. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, college graduates went onto medical or law school to become doctors and lawyers.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, they got MBAs and went to Wall Street. But in this new century, I believe that the best opportunities are in the agriculture sector. That’s why I always tell my son and his friends to become farmers! Now, I’m not suggesting new college grads strap on a pair of coveralls and pick up a hoe. But going back to school to study agricultural economics could open the door to a comparatively high-paying position.

The world is hungry, and it’s only a matter of time before innovative U.S. companies such as Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto ramp up hiring to keep everyone fed. But recent college grads aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit as this sector thrives…

One of the articles began like this…

“With the grains market in a multiyear bull market, there are countless opportunities in the grain sector that could have incredible payoffs for investors. In general, commodities are far more volatile than equities, foreign-exchange or fixed-income products. The moves up can be dramatic. The moves down can be huge as well. But there are great opportunities in the options market to profit on both the upside and the downside of these swings. Consider this… In 2008, corn prices exploded due to a poor harvest. That season, farmers decided to grow corn in lieu of cotton. What happened? Well, this created a shortage of cotton. As a result…Cotton Prices Proceeded to Rally 500%!”

A few weeks later this article appeared in the NY Times. I found both authors’ comments interesting and telling. Wall Street big wigs are touting the benefit of an industry that has long been viewed as demeaning and substandard. Have farmer’s now been raised to the level of competent businessman? Are people FINALLY realizing that there is more to feeding a hungry world than just the perceived overall wearing, tobacco spitting, pitchfork holding hick? Is manure beginning to smell like money? We all know the answers to these questions because we have all known for a very long time just how important growing food is.

Most of Andy Hecht’s articles were about large agri-business companies and corporate farmed commodities like cotton and grains and investing in them for long term gains, so I didn’t link them here. But, the NY Times article is linked below. I hope you enjoy it and take away that what we are all trying to do is worthwhile.

BTW – some of the nicest millionaires I know – are farmers.

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By Stephen Gandel

If you want to become rich, Jim Rogers, investment whiz, best-selling author and one of Wall Street’s towering personalities, has this advice: Become a farmer. Food prices have been high recently. Some have questioned how long that can continue. Not Rogers. He predicts that farming incomes will rise dramatically in the next few decades, faster than those in most other industries — even Wall Street. The essence of his argument is this: We don’t need more bankers. What we need are more farmers. The invisible hand will do its magic. “The world has got a serious food problem,” says Rogers. “The only real way to solve it is to draw more people back to agriculture.”

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2 Responses to “Want to Make More than a Banker? Become a Farmer!”

  1. Winnie Thomlyn says:

    I am looking for some good software to trade oil future options on autopilot so I can take out the emotions and guessing …Do you know a cheap good program that can attach on to my online broker for trading light crude oil future options ?

  2. Rena Inabinet says:

    We did the same thing Daisy. We narrowed it down to a few sites first but we realized that was still way too much. That’s when we decided to focus on just one site and then only a few pages on that site.

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