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

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.”

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.

The answer is evident already. Some people are warning against a ban on offshore drilling. One authority said drilling should be allowed in “less sensitive” areas. As if getting hit in the head with a hammer would be painful, so show me a “less sensitive” area of your body I can pound on.

I have always realized that most people wouldn’t accept my homestead solutions to so many of the world’s problems as outlined in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living and many other writings, but I’d always assumed that they would at least appreciate the Garden of Eden kind of world that kind of living would result in. That’s why the sudden thought was so terrifying. To the question “Is this the kind of world you want to live in?” a good many people wouldn’t hesitate a moment before shouting YES!

They love cities, the bigger, more crowded, noisier, and more sophisticated the better. They fear and detest the countryside: solitude, lurking unknown dangers, rough unpaved terrain, bugs. Oil pollution in the Gulf of Mexico or in Alaska doesn’t faze them: they’re much more concerned about the latest tech gizmo and power outages and whatever entertainment is planned for next weekend. And of course, they love their cars. For most people, reducing the use of personal transportation would be a major hardship, and eliminating it would be unthinkable.

I always knew my diatribes against the American automobile culture and sybaritic comforts in general would be ignored or ridiculed: there simply is no way anybody is going back to the “Dark Ages” of maybe 50 years ago unless they decide to become Amish, or if some unseen and unimaginable force would revive hippiedom. And of course, that would still leave a vast majority believing that the world simply could not function without all the trappings of affluence that even “poor” people have come to take for granted, again, in my lifetime.

In other words, most people are not going to give up their lush lawns and washed cars — to say nothing of flush toilets and daily showers— until they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out. They are not going to give up piloting a huge metal machine on paved roads to go someplace else for some insignificant reason, nor will they even give up mowing that lush lawn — until there is no more gas, or until it becomes truly unbearably expensive, or until the air becomes too polluted to breathe. They are not going to grow vegetables and chickens in their backyards — until the supermarket shelves are empty and they are literally starving. And even then they’ll most likely blame politicians and demand that “something be done about it.” But then it will be too late.

It’s all going to happen, and you know it. It’s about sustainability. It simply isn’t possible to use up water, oil, and other finite resources, or to befoul them so as to render them useless for human purposes, without eventually coming to the bottom of the barrel. When we reach that point, it’s all over.

During the 50-some years I’ve been writing about this, I have seen rare glimpses of hope: periods when it really did seem like maybe the world was coming to its senses, or more often, that some external event would force the issue. They all turned out to be chimeras.

Which increases the odds that yes indeed, the world will eventually become uninhabitable for humans. The Earth will not die; there will still be life (such as cockroaches and lichens), but humans? Not likely, even in a primitive state.

There are a number of problems involved here, most concerning today’s common concepts of the ideal world, where oil pollution of ecologically and economically crucial oceans is less of a problem than poor tv reception, snow removal must be a top priority for a northern mayor who wants to remain in office, and in general, nature is not a partner, but something to be conquered. Almost all of these problems could be alleviated by simple, self-sufficient, sustainable living.

The Earth’s resources are not infinite: we must exist within certain limits. We have already reached some of those limits, and are approaching more. But what would be so terrible about living within those limits? Those who believe in and demand constant economic growth and see that as the only “progress” consider such thinking to be ridiculous, and what’s worse, anti-capitalist. But to a homesteader, who understands the webs and strands and can appreciate the here and now and simple pleasures, it’s a no-brainer. We must change our management of the planet now, voluntarily, by the way we live — by what we consume, waste, destroy and despoil, and by what we conserve, protect, recycle and substitute. Most importantly, it’s not a hardship at all: With the right attitude, it’s a beautiful way to live!

Unfortunately, since most people don’t agree, we are likely to lose not only the beautiful life, but even the option of pursuing it. Which should terrify anyone who thinks about it. So I hope you too will lie sleepless. If enough of us can work together, it still might not be too late.

Language note: Most people still speak of an oil “spill.” I do not. A “spill” is when someone tips over a glass of milk and says “oops!” And while we’re advised not to cry over spilled milk, that is certainly not the case when millions of gallons of petroleum wreak further havoc on our already beleaguered planet.

This is obviously important to a writer. I try to anticipate possible objections to everything I say. Sometimes this helps clarify my thinking. It can make me change my mind by seeing another angle before engraving my own idea in stone. Or setting it down on paper. Or just sending it out on the ether.

Sometimes it prepares me for negative feedback. In that case I can try to fill in the gaps in my argument or presentation, to head ‘em off at the pass.

(Alas, this can be futile. In The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living I knew very well some readers would say I didn’t explain enough about how to live self-sufficiently. So I stated quite explicitly, and several times, that there are dozens of entire books devoted exclusively to raising goats… as well as others on chickens, food preservation, wood heat, alternative energy, and of course gardening, along with every other topic pertaining to self-sufficiency. There is no way on Earth anyone could cover any one of those in a single chapter or less. Still, several readers have complained that the book doesn’t tell them everything they want to know about self-sufficient living.)

Even when it’s futile, I can take refuge in knowing that I did my best… and I don’t have to change my thinking. And yet, even after cross-examining myself to the best of my ability, I can still be caught by surprise.

Such was the case when I picked up the Saturday-Sunday Wall Street Journal last weekend. I had just posted my Friday blog based on an article by Joe Queenan in the previous weekend’s paper. I obviously thought it was a great piece, so I wasn’t prepared for the reader reaction. “Mr. Queenan’s rant…” “Mr. Queenan’s snide comment…” “Mr. Queenan’s passionately cynical lament…”

Wow! And that was on nothing more consequential than the prospects of the class of 2010! I shudder to think what they would have said about something more earth-shaking, or even just my embellishments to his essay!

Disagreements are all around us, every day. The Wisconsin legislature recently okayed the sale of raw milk, after a lengthy and sometimes bitter debate. But then, last week, the governor vetoed it. A few weeks ago Eau Claire decided not to allow chickens in the city, so this week a nearby village decided to follow their lead. Let’s not even get into what’s going on in Washington, the oil spill, the two Koreas, or the divorce courts.

I’m not sure what all this means. There are diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, to be sure, but so many of our disagreements go far beyond mere diversity. And if we humans find it impossible to agree even on petty matters, what hope is there for the big and important things, which usually encompass many, many petty matters?

There is compromise, of course, the usual tool of democracy and civilized peoples. But any decent craftsman knows that a multi-purpose tool seldom works as well as a specialized one, designed and fabricated for a specific purpose. Too often, compromise ends up being the worst of both worlds.

We don’t like to even acknowledge the use of force to settle disagreements, but its presence is obvious. Today, force is usually in the form of money, in one way or another. Call it greasing the skids if you will, and yes, it does make life easier and less contentious for many, but is it the best way to solve problems or to advance civilization?

Power? Political power, which more often boils down to class and position rather than formal legislation, can also be based on money.

It’s rare when the power of an idea takes hold to such a degree that it sways opinions and outcomes. But when it does, it’s a beautiful example of what it means to be human.

As the most interesting argument-settler, I nominate Fate. While two factions of a village are debating whether they should build a dike or a tornado shelter, the village is destroyed by a forest fire.

This happens all the time. The Great Concerns of 10, 20, 50 years ago have mostly faded away. Most of the Great Concerns of today weren’t even on the radar a few years back, and they’ll fade away too. No one can say with any certainty what the Great Concerns of tomorrow will be. Maybe arguing about them is a waste of time. Getting vehement or even violent about it is definitely a waste of effort.

It might be impossible to avoid disagreements, but this doesn’t imply that conflicts must necessarily follow. Ask anyone who’s been married to the same person for 50 years or more. But thinking of that…

When you consider that no two people have exactly the same experiences, starting with childhood… exactly the same education or ideas… the same genes and dreams… maybe the amazing thing is that we humans get along as well as we do. — Jd Belanger