Rowell,
I can't be bothered starting the argument with people like Ray. That 'stuff' in various forms has been around all of my adult life, Enoch Powell in the UK was the first, that was fifty years ago, and we all know what we had before that!
Fascinated by the 'Paradox'. I am working on bringing it up to date. The numbers don't look good.
The big question is going to be that if the rural economy, particularly farming, or food production has been going bad for so long, if the export markets for food are so corrupted by everything from the oligarchic powers, to subsidies, to Futures trading - why bother growing food for any market other than the home market?
It is apparent from the current numbers on the rural debt and the rate of increase of that debt, that although Australian farmers remain government subsidy free, they have been subsidizing themselves by borrowing more as their terms of trade have continued to decline.
In Australia we are just 5% 0f world wheat production and (about/on average) 15% of the wheat traded annually. With a farm gate price around $200/tonne I am told there is no money in that at the average yield, Australia wide, of 1.9 tonnes/ha.
You can't budget for a good year, can you?
Back to work, the numbers are making my head ache. Even worse is trying to distill it all down to less than 5/6000 words. I have my own place in Steve's archives after my efforts on MIS schemes!
Before my time, that's me
Cheers
Roger