Since we've left home, we've spent time in chili pepper plots that filled the shallow valleys of southern New Mexico; cotton fields of west Texas that were plowed so close to the dirt roads that there was no shoulder or ditch, tulip fields laid out in Holland that looked like a Mondrian canvas - only brighter; fragile, high-mountain fields of barley and buckwheat in the Himalayas that (and this is a fact) will not exist in twenty years because the glaciers that supply the water for irrigation will be melted; super-verdant planes of rice that stretched to the horizon in the Mekong delta where conditions are so fertile they can plant and harvest three crops in a single year. There were others but, for sheer, fully-realized beauty, none hold a candle to what we hiked through in Guizhou Province.
Wandering around the developing world, you come to the undeniable realization that most of the world's population is still involved with farming. In the US, something like 40% of our population still farmed as recently as the early 1900's. Now, the number is closer to 2.5%. Not so in almost all the countries we've visited. During planting or harvest, fields are CRAWLING with PEOPLE digging or cutting or threshing or carrying or plowing.
Imagine if this were your office.
They work hard but, wow, what beautiful plots they tend. We traveled around this area for a few weeks. I haven't felt so at peace since we were isolated on an island in Thailand or high in the Himalayas of Nepal. I have no idea how long areas like this will remain. China is undergoing such huge and sweeping changes right now. The largest migration in human history started some twenty years ago and is accelerating each year. Rural, farming Chinese are flocking to the cities for higher paying work. The trade-offs don't make the choice look simple.
Like farming a skyscraper
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