Farm workers have issued a challenge to the 15 million or more unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs!

The effort is tongue-in-cheek and its real purpose is immigration reform, but it made me think about something else.

If you’ve been following my scribblings you’re aware that I’ve been suggesting that many unemployed people could make productive use of their enforced idleness by doing what many employed people dream of, but are too busy to accomplish: homesteading. At the very least, they could grow some of their own food. And you’re also aware that I have been saying (for years) that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from — and that it’s highly subsidized, which is one of the reasons growing your own isn’t always cheaper than store-bought stuff. But this farm workers’ campaign combines all that and more in a neat package, and ties it with a bow.

The U.S. Dept. of Labor says three out of four farm workers were not born in this country, and more than half are here illegally. A small part of this complex issue involves the concern that illegal aliens are working, while American citizens are not. So the United Farm Workers are saying, “come on, take our jobs!” not because they expect very many takers, but because the lack of enthusiasm for that back-breaking kind of labor will spotlight the need for immigrant workers.

I have had some experience with this. The first time in my life I ever made more than $100 a week was as a migrant laborer. That was in 1953, when $100 was big money. The catch: the pay was 90¢ an hour. (Side note: That was a decent wage. I worked many jobs for 75¢ an hour, even years later.) That means an average 14-15 hour workday, although I vividly recall one sweltering June morning when we started at 6 a.m as usual, worked straight through to 2 a.m. the next day, and went back to work at 6 again.

And I was 15 years old. Even then, nobody wanted to work like that, so the 16-year age limit was lowered to help save the crop.

This was in a Wisconsin pea cannery, in the days before peas were combined in the field. Truckloads of pea vines were dumped and forked into the viner by hand. The shelled peas spilled into wooden boxes, while the vines piled up in huge stinking stacks. My job was to remove and stack each box as it was filled, replacing it with an empty. The guys forking the vines into the shelling machine worked a lot harder than I did.

A few years later, I found myself in California, nearly broke and with nothing to do. So I signed on to pick green beans, by hand. We were paid by the pound.

Little kids picked more than I did, and made more money. (They also spoke much better Spanish.) A buddy and I combined a day’s wages to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, which is all we had to live on. Shortly after that I enlisted in the Marine Corps, where the pay was $90 a month, but at least we got to eat. (A few years later I was back with the migrants, but that time to interview César Chávez, founder of the United Farm Workers, for a magazine article.)

Based on those experiences alone, I don’t foresee many average American citizens rushing to become farm laborers, even when their unemployment checks run out. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t really expect very many to become homesteaders, either. We as a nation have become too soft to do much actual physical labor, too dependent to scratch for ourselves, and too mentally lazy to figure it all out.

So the long spiraling vortex down the tube continues, with apparently nobody seeing the tangled webs and connections, much less able to deal with them. I certainly don’t have any answers — aside from homesteading, which is only slightly more popular than picking beans for The Man in triple digit temperatures.

When it all hits the bottom, that’s when things will change. Seems like that time is getting closer and closer.

Note: If you’re looking for work, fill out the online form under the banner “I want to be a farm worker” at www.takeourjobs.org

I’m down on blogging again, not in spite of my week off, but because of it. After driving 2,450 miles, I’m more convinced than ever that the world has gone crazy, and blogging is part of it.

Last Friday we were attending the American Conifer Society national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The entire trip violated most of the principles I love to rail against, especially in blogs. We burned up more than 90 gallons of gas, adding to the pollution and helping justify all that road construction and everything else that goes with the automobile culture. Even though we try to patronize local diners and cafes, there were times when we couldn’t find anything but McDonalds-type places. And then there was the old truism: no matter where you go, there you are. So why bother?

Why does everybody want to be someplace else? I didn’t know before we went, and I don’t know now. Sure, travel is broadening and all of that rot, and I’m sure that for some people at least it’s both educational and entertaining. But I’ll wager that for 90 percent of us, it’s nothing but mindless diversion.

Of course, this comes from a guy who, early in his career as a magazine writer, flew 100,000 miles a year, until every airport and hotel room looked the same. I quit that job so I could stay home and garden and raise chickens and goats. That was more than 40 years ago, and every time a plane passes overheard I still look up and wonder who’s on it, where they’re going, and why. I’ve written about this in my Countryside Beyond the Sidewalks column and got some tart replies from people who had just been on important trips, such as attending a funeral. That doesn’t change my basic view, but even if it did, it doesn’t affect my own attitude toward travel.

Yes, we saw some interesting sights. Meaning gardens, mostly, since not much else holds much interest for me any more. But they weren’t that interesting. A prime example: a pot at the famed Biltmore Estate Gardens in Asheville featured common kale — yes, the vegetable — and Creeping Jenny, which many gardeners consider a weed. And it cost $60 to look at it. (Okay, so they threw in America’s largest “home” too. Big deal. We didn’t even go in.)

We met some interesting people. In most cases, it was a brief encounter: we didn’t get to know each other, and we’ll probably never meet again. I’ve had much more interesting, and meaningful, relationships with pen pals in the olden days of paper letters, envelopes and stamps.

We learned a few things, but shucks, I learn something new every day without leaving home. Well, I learned some things I wouldn’t pick up at home.

For example, I was dimly aware that if I had a laptop computer I could have sent a blog last Friday from almost anywhere. But not having been out in the world lately, I had no idea how ubiquitous that has become. For me, getting away from the computer for a week or two ought to be part of a vacation. Other people go into a restaurant and open their laptops before they look at the menu.

Of course, that’s still not as bad as cell phones. Some people should have them embedded into their skulls. What took the cake in this department was when a lady pulled up next to our convention tour bus at a stop light with not one, but two cell phones! She was talking on one, texting on the other, and supposedly driving a car on a very busy highway in a large city, all at the same time. What in the world could she possibly have been saying that was so all-fired important?

She’s crazy. But so is most of the world. No doubt many would say the same about me, but that doesn’t mean I have get involved in their kind of insanity. I like the Amish precept of being in the world, but not of the world. I went for 10 days without reading a real newspaper or looking at a computer. When I got home and reverted to my old reading habits, I wondered why. If I didn’t miss it then, and don’t enjoy it now, why not just become a hermit?

Putting it all together, I don’t think the world needs any more yapping like I’m doing here. But I do think I know at least part of the answer.

A city fellow was visiting his brother on the homestead. The city brother’s family was impressed by the animals, the gardens, and the fresh food, but somewhat aghast at all the work involved.

Sitting on the porch after dinner, the city relatives talked about their Caribbean cruise last spring, their new iPad, and their upcoming trip to Las Vegas, while the country folks were more focused on the new kid goats and how good the tomatoes were looking.

Finally, the city brother said, “Bro, you really should get away once in awhile. Why don’t you come to our summer place on the lake and spend a few days on our boat?”

“Can’t,” came the reply. “Soon’s we get the hay in, it’ll be canning season.”

“Good Heavens,” the city brother exploded. “How come you never have any fun!?”

The homesteader calmly replied, “We’re happy. Happy people don’t need to have fun.”

Perhaps you missed it, but “superweeds” — unloved plants that thumb their noses at herbicides such as Roundup — were in the news last week. Of course, if you’ve been reading magazines such as Countryside for the past 30-40 years, it’s not news at all that weeds have adapted to plant-killers, requiring more and stronger chemicals in what becomes a never-ending spiral.

Most people missed the story because it wasn’t very widely reported: it wasn’t news because most people don’t care. Very few have any inkling of how this affects them, why it’s important, or even what it all means. They know very little about organic farming because they know very little about where their food comes from.

There is neither time nor space here to provide the background for anyone who has stumbled onto this site accidentally and lacks even a basic understanding of organic farming. But to at least try to provide a frame of reference, let’s just say that organic farmers don’t use synthetic biocides for many reasons, all of which funnel down to their effects on the biosphere, the Living Earth, which includes us. An herbicide — the plant-killer branch of the pesticide family — doesn’t only kill weeds. It kills other plants as well, of course, but through the webs of ecology it can also kill insects and other animals that depend on those plants for food or habitat. This in turn affects higher forms of life that depend on those creatures for sustenance. None of this takes into account the potential deleterious side effects of the chemicals on soil, water, and humans. This doesn’t begin to cover the subject, but it’s enough to get us to the next step.

Herbicides have been used since ancient times: conquering armies spread salt on the land to inhibit food production, thus starving their enemies. Salt has historically been used to control weeds in salt-tolerant crops such as asparagus. But it wasn’t until after World War II, when “better living through chemistry” arrived and the chemical factories of the war machine lay idle, that chemical pesticides and fertilizers transformed agri-culture into industrial agri-business.

Monsanto had been a leading chemical company since 1901, but not until 1945 did it start producing and marketing agricultural chemicals, including 2,4D. In 1960, an Agricultural Division was established. Today, Monsanto is strictly an agribusiness, the largest seed company in the world, and famous for such controversial products as bovine somatotropin (Bst) and herbicides including Ramrod, Lasso, and Roundup. These are based on glyphosate, which Monsanto patented in the 1970s, and which became a cash cow for the company. When the patent ran out in 2000, cheaper products from China flooded the market, and glyphosate use proliferated even more.

Roundup was first sold in 1976. Then there was Roundup D-PAK. Then Roundup Ultra. Then Roundup UltraMAX. Each one was “new and improved.” But a more insidious development was “Roundup Ready” seeds. Through bioengineering, planted crops can resist the deadly effects of the herbicide, making its use even more widespread. Today, 80% of the corn and 90% of the soybeans grown in the U.S. come from Roundup Ready seeds (which of course come only from Monsanto). But if scientists can develop seeds immune to toxic chemicals, so can nature.

We already have the makings of a marvelously complex and intriguing bedtime story for anyone just starting to get involved in organic farming, but this is only the beginning.

For example, while organic farmers shun herbicides in general, if only on principle, glyphosate (and Roundup) have found some support. The chief scientist for a nonprofit organic advocacy group, the Organic Center, recently said, “If glyphosate isn’t the safest herbicide, it comes damn close.” Jeff Gilman, an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota, takes a very balanced and open-minded but scientific approach to all aspects of gardening. In The Truth About Organic Gardening, he discusses the pros and cons of glyphosate, concluding that properly used, it does have its place. He says “We aren’t surprised if a flame from a flamethrower, a common organic method of weed control, kills frogs, so why are we surprised that a heavy dose of Roundup does?” (Like many in the organic community, he’s bothered less by glyphosate than by the other ingredients in Roundup.)

The story would also involve such interesting twists as the 1996 lawsuit accusing Monsanto of false and misleading advertising by claiming that its glyphosate-based herbicides were “safer than table salt.” There were also accusations — and convictions — involving scientific fraud.

Early on, some scientists and many organic farmers were concerned about herbicide resistance to glyphosate. Monsanto, naturally, dismissed such concerns. Now they can’t, because farmers across the country are finding weeds that are unaffected by the herbicide. At least nine species are known to be immune, affecting millions of acres in more than 20 Midwestern and Southern states. And the other chemical companies are taking notice.

Now, here’s what should be the real news in this story: What has this taught us?

Don’t be silly. We haven’t learned a doggone thing. Here’s how the agribusiness industry is facing this challenge:

The other ag chemical companies see Monsanto’s trouble as an opportunity to revive the older, even more dangerous herbicides that Roundup displaced, including 2,4-D and dicamba. What’s much, much worse, they’re taking a page from Monsanto’s book and developing bioengineered seeds to match their own brands of herbicides. According to The Wall Street Journal, Dow Chemical Co., DuPont Co., Bayer AG, BASF SE and Syngenta AG are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically modified (GM, or “Frankenstein”) soybean, corn and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their house-brand herbicides.

Have they lost their minds? Can’t any halfway intelligent individual see the handwriting on the wall?

Obviously not. Said Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta: “The herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it out. Now it is getting fun again.”

Fun. As I said last week, the really terrifying thing is that some people actually like what the world is becoming. —Jd Belanger

Note: There will be no blog here next Friday. See you in two weeks.