By Joel McNair, Belleville, Wisconsin — Talk of $200 per barrel crude oil and seven-dollar per gallon gasoline grabs headlines and earns sound bites, and indeed these things may be reality sooner rather than later. Or they may not.

History and common sense tell us the current oil price trend line will not continue unabated. My own guess, shared by others but still mainly conjecture, is that a severe global economic slowdown created by a nasty combination of U.S. fiscal problems and entwined energy/food price inflation will depress oil demand over the next few years. U.S. use is already dropping, and the rapid pace of growth in India and China will be slowed, although probably not reversed. Continue reading “Making do at the end of the easy oil era”

By Jim Van Der Pol, Kerkhoven, Minnesota — This is the fifth and final column of a series on my thoughts on the impacts our farms and businesses may have upon our families, the communities in which they are located, and ultimately upon the world at large. I started with an illustration of a deflected arrow, went on to talk about our farms and our children, then about labor and technology, value-added farm product-based businesses, and learning to do business with our friends.

This piece is last because I put it off. It is the most intimidating of all, because in it I will try to convince you that all of these things are possible. It is necessarily then about attitude, about core belief, be it philosophy or religion; that is, about how we view ourselves and our place in the universe. Continue reading “To succeed, we must plan for seven generations”