Quote from: taxed on October 13, 2011, 08:27:06 PM

I asked him about it, and he said they aren't worried at all...  I am in your corner though...  you aren't the first guy paying attention to China we've talked about it with, and all the really smart people like yourself are in line about China...

The spooky thing right now is that there are no clear cut safe havens. Nowhere you can just plant your money and not think about it. Not now. Not in this economy.

If I were uber rich I would probably be looking to snap up prime farmland in countries with favorable tax and legal structures. Exclusively in areas with good rainfall. Buying farmland that requires you to drain aquifers like in north china or west texas or paraguay is a doomed proposition. No long term future there.

Quote from: Dan on October 14, 2011, 07:27:22 AM

The spooky thing right now is that there are no clear cut safe havens. Nowhere you can just plant your money and not think about it. Not now. Not in this economy.

If I were uber rich I would probably be looking to snap up prime farmland in countries with favorable tax and legal structures. Exclusively in areas with good rainfall. Buying farmland that requires you to drain aquifers like in north china or west texas or paraguay is a doomed proposition. No long term future there.

Actually an aquifer is a better bet than rainfall. Ask the Mayans or any of those countries that depend on the Monsoon. Although an aquifer is really nothing but stored long term rainfall. I think China's problem is their government. Right now their competitive advantage arises from their labor advantage due to the extreme poverty of the people. This is "helped" by government policies designed to keep labor costs down. But no one wants to remain poor. Eventually China will run into the same problem faced by Japan and Korea, which also originally had a labor cost advantage. At which point they will have to switch from a cheap export economy to something else. That normally requires a more Liberal (in the old meaning of the word) government and economic system, which means the Communists will have to go. In addition, right now the economy is covering up for the inefficiencies and corruption of many of state run industries, something else that can't continue indefinitely.

But aquifers get depleted after a few years. Thereby severely impairing the value of the land you bought. I would rather not by land with a measurable shelf life if I could help it.

Quote from: Dan on October 14, 2011, 09:21:53 AM
But aquifers get depleted after a few years. Thereby severely impairing the value of the land you bought. I would rather not by land with a measurable shelf life if I could help it.

Actually as I noted, it all comes back to rainfall. If the rain fall is sufficient, you never really use up the aquifer - Europe is an excellent example. The sufficient rainfall means they never really have to tap into the aquifer, which is constantly being refilled in any case. One thing I always wondered about the central North America, why are they tapping into the aquifer in an area that is constantly worried about annual flooding? It strikes me that large scale, river based, irrigation would be far more efficient than wells for watering crops.

Quote from: mdgiles on October 14, 2011, 09:34:50 AM
Actually as I noted, it all comes back to rainfall. If the rain fall is sufficient, you never really use up the aquifer - Europe is an excellent example. The sufficient rainfall means they never really have to tap into the aquifer, which is constantly being refilled in any case. One thing I always wondered about the central North America, why are they tapping into the aquifer in an area that is constantly worried about annual flooding? It strikes me that large scale, river based, irrigation would be far more efficient than wells for watering crops.

You are coming back to my original point. Places like Europe and the American southeast get enough rain that it's not an issue. Places like West Texas, North China and Paraguay have to pump out more water annually than can be replentished in order to have a commercially viable crop yield. So they can farm a few years until the shallow aquifer is tapped out and then they are limited to current year rainfall. And when you are talking about a place that gets less than 20 inches per year, that isn't enough to grown most grain crops.

Quote from: Dan on October 14, 2011, 09:41:30 AM

You are coming back to my original point. Places like Europe and the American southeast get enough rain that it's not an issue. Places like West Texas, North China and Paraguay have to pump out more water annually than can be replentished in order to have a commercially viable crop yield. So they can farm a few years until the shallow aquifer is tapped out and then they are limited to current year rainfall. And when you are talking about a place that gets less than 20 inches per year, that isn't enough to grown most grain crops.

My point is, why are they using wells in the first place. There are rivers running on or near these places. Why aren't you using those. It would be the equivalent of someone in Egypt using a well, and ignoring the Nile. We have all these water projects and levee systems to keep rivers channeled; when a smart solution would be to set up and irrigation system that allows those rivers to safely flood those fields every year. Just as the Egyptians long ago set their fields up so that the Nile floods and fertilizes their fields each year.

We don't farm our land but if we did then the nearest river would be more than 30 miles away. Not really practical for that sort of thing and we live in an area in the south that gets a lot of rainfall.

The best strategy is to live in a high rainfall area and use shallow aquifer wells that are easily replentished to cover the dry periods that come every so often. That way your aquifer is only there for exceptions and it is a renewable resource. ;)

Quote from: Dan on October 14, 2011, 09:53:22 AM
We don't farm our land but if we did then the nearest river would be more than 30 miles away. Not really practical for that sort of thing and we live in an area in the south that gets a lot of rainfall.

The best strategy is to live in a high rainfall area and use shallow aquifer wells that are easily replentished to cover the dry periods that come every so often. That way your aquifer is only there for exceptions and it is a renewable resource. ;)

How far away are New York and Los Angeles from the watersheds they use as their supplies. An indeed it is best to live in a high rainfall area. But if you don't, I believe they should use a river irrigation system and only go to the aquifer in emergencies.

And if you stick with my plan of buying farmland only in high rainfall areas then you don't have to worry about government regulations that do not allow you to pull from the river for fear of harming the fuzzy-headed sap sucker or whatever.

Quote from: Dan on October 14, 2011, 10:22:30 AM
And if you stick with my plan of buying farmland only in high rainfall areas then you don't have to worry about government regulations that do not allow you to pull from the river for fear of harming the fuzzy-headed sap sucker or whatever.

The way we are going the government will set regulations on use of rainfall.