A farmer's "next challenge"?

Yes, listen up farmers—if you need advice you can always get it from a mining company’s billboards.

Because mining companies always serve the public good and treat the land really well. PotashCorp really cares about the starving multitudes all over the planet. And it cares about our prairie farmers who have to shoulder the responsibility of feeding the world—guys like the model in the new PotashCorp ads photoshopped in to make it look like he is outstanding in his field.

I bet they care so much they are even working on a program to help our farmers take up the next challenge after they feed 9 billion with unsustainable, petro-intensive, climate-change-driving high-yield agriculture. And that would be helping them come up with a way to explain to their grandchildren (and themselves) just why it was a good idea to remove every shred of natural cover on miles and miles of the land they manage. But that shouldn’t too difficult—you can always appeal to an authority like God or global trade, something like that:

“Well you see, theoretical grandchild, the Good Lord made this land very fertile—good for growing the wheat and canola that starving children eat all over the planet. We’ve been doing it here for almost 100 years. Your great-granddad was the first person to grow wheat in this part of Saskatchewan.” 

“Really? What was here before that?” 

“Oh, not much really. Just a bunch of grass. It maybe fed some buffalo and a few nomadic Indians who came by now and then but they are better off with the real food they have now. Your grandpa used to have a bit of that old grass where the school used to be but we crop that spot now. It’d be irresponsible to keep a piece of land in grass when it could be productive and feed people.” 

“Why are we feeding people who live so far away? Can’t they feed themselves?” 

“Well, that is a good question. Let’s see if I can remember my Econ. 101. Ok, here we have the know-how to use machines and chemicals and thousands of acres to grow a whole lot of food without having to employ many people. And we do that better than anyone on the planet. That is what economists call our ‘comparative advantage’. People who buy our grain and canola in other parts of the world might not be so good at feeding themselves but they have their own things they’re good at—things like, oh I don’t know, digging conflict minerals out of the ground to provide the rare metals Chinese people need to make your smartphone work...that kind of thing. It all works out quite nicely.”

“Yeah, but grandpa....” 

“Now you run along and play . . . grandpa has to go stand in the field and think about how he is going to feed 9 billion people.”

And now, it might be a good idea to clear the palate with some food for thought from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (click on the image below to see a larger version):