Water is the single most important determination of civilization. I travelled around the world a couple of times and I have seen whole societies that disappeared because the water disappeared. People can survive recession and war, revolution and famine, plague, but they cannot survive without water. That ends the whole story, no matter how smart you think you are.
There is no question that we are facing constraints. They are already here in many parts of the world. Water, I presume, is going to get very expensive or else we are going to move to where the water is. This is how societies and civilizations have developed. Once upon a time there was a lot of farming in the Sahara desert that we now know of. It is now a desert and everybody moved away because there is no more water there.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
Once in 1980, when oil had been booming for a decade, I came to the conclusion the bull market was over, and I shorted oil. And that weekend Iran and Iraq went to war. Needless to say, I had to scramble in panic, and I covered like every other amateur.
One could say that was bad luck. But no, no. Somebody knew that was coming. You don't move a lot of armies and start a war without some preparation. I just hadn't done enough homework. Nearly all the mistakes I've made have been from not doing enough homework. Whenever I get sloppy I nearly always lose.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
The whole Southwest is facing a serious water problem. The aquifer, based on what I read, is drying up out there. And not just in California but all over the Southwest. And if that happens America will have to absorb a gigantic change. If you have water and productive land you will be very, very rich. Because whether we like it or not – now this is not going to happen next year, I don’t think California is going to become a desert any time soon – it is a process which is going on, from what I can read.
And from what I can see nobody in the government seems to know or care about it. The government of California is learning but they are not solving the problem, they are deliberating about the problem. But again it is just not the US, there many places in the world with problems – China, India, the Middle East, many places have big water problems.
Throughout history we have had economic slowdowns every four to seven years, every so often. Always have, and always will. Nobody has solved that problem, not even the central banks. We are going to have another one in the world. We are going to have more I should say, and they will get worse because the debt situation is higher and higher. We hear all this talk about austerity and cutting back but every country in the world has higher debt now than it had last year and will have higher debt next year.
The buildup of debt in the US alone is staggering; Japan is staggering, everywhere is staggering. So the next time we have an economic slowdown it is going to be much worse than the last time, and if the world survives that one, the one after that is going to be worse and worse.
Because as you point out, if interest rates go higher – and they will; this current level of interest rates is not only abnormal but absurd, it has never been so low anywhere in the world – with the gigantic amount of debt we are going to have gigantic problems worldwide: more turmoil, we will probably have wars, governments fail, countries fail. This is going to be a mess.
So buy yourself a farm. Be prepared! It’s going to be a serious mess. And hopefully your farm will be far away from the marauding hordes.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
There is very little shift. Farming has been a terrible business for 30 years. And when that happens people go to where the money is. They go to Wall Street, wherever the money is.
In America the average age of farmers is 58 because nobody wants to be a farmer anymore. There are farms in Japan that are empty because there is nobody to farm them; they are even experimenting bringing in workers from China, and they don’t like foreigners at all but they have little choice. The average age in Australia is 58. Canada has the oldest age for farmers in recorded history. In the UK the highest rate of suicide is in agriculture. I guess we all know that millions of Indian farmers commit suicide because things are so terrible.
More people in America study public relations than agriculture, because it has been a terrible business. The only that is going to change is for it to become very profitable and for young people to see the farmers getting rich. Of course they will say “those guys are driving Lamborghini's and I want one too so I will become a farmer”.
But it’s not going to happen until it becomes an exciting and profitable business. The Soviets tried to make people farm, they had all these coops or whatever they called them; Mao Tse Tung tried the same thing and eventually ruined Chinese agriculture by forcing people to become farmers. It doesn’t work.
The only way it works is for people to become motivated to become farmers and that will only happen when they get rich. There have been many periods in history where farmers got rich and powerful. It will happen again.
If you don’t have water you can’t make it. I’m wildly bullish on China but if they don’t solve the water problem there’s no China story. Likewise India has a water problem, worse in fact. There’s no question that India will be in worse shape than China. Northern India has gigantic problems. And that’s a nation of a billion people. Add another 1.3 billion in China and you have a big water problem.
 |
| View of Shanghai |
There are great opportunities in water. I haven’t found one that is publicly listed as of yet. I am sure there are several, I am just too lazy to find them. But I would love to find water plays that are substantial and serious.
The problem with water is that you can’t own it. Because if you do, when the crisis comes the politicians will hang you in the public square because you are exploiting Man’s God given right to water. And they will curse and scream at you. But if you find a way to solve the water problem they will build a monument for you. You will be very, very rich. But for goodness sake don’t own the water because if you do they will take it away from you, torture you and execute you.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.
Water is the single most important determination of civilization. I travelled around the world a couple of times and I have seen whole societies that disappeared because the water disappeared. People can survive recession and war, revolution and famine, plague, but they cannot survive without water. That ends the whole story, no matter how smart you think you are.
