The Aging Farmer

George T. Wittman’s newest blog post!

The America imagined by Thomas Jefferson was an America of small farmers.  And for a long time, it looked like he was right; the vast majority of Americans lived a rural existence as subsistence farmers well into the 19th century and long after Jefferson’s death.  However, that image has completely changed in the modern era, as America has since turned into a sprawling suburb, and fewer and fewer young people are turning to a profession as farmers.  I recently came across  an article that discusses the surprisingly low number of young farmers in America.

The Census of Agriculture, released every five years by the US Department of Agriculture, discovered that the average age of “principal operators” (the person most responsible for decision-making on farms and ranches) climbed from 57.1 in 2007 to 58.3.  Compare that to 1982, where the average age was 50.5.  Data released just this past week put the average even higher in six states at 60 or older.  Of course, the median age of all American workers, 42.4, is climbing across the board.  By 2020, an estimated 25% of the labor force will be 55 or older.  Nonetheless, the overall trend pales next to the rate that the age of farmers is increasing.  A surprising 10% of farmers and ranchers are currently 75 or older.  This is because farming is a tough business for young people to break into, due to the sky-high costs of prime farmland and necessary equipment such as combines and tractors.  From 2007 to 2012, the number of “beginning farmers” declined 20 percent.  Less than 120,000 of America’s 2.1 million principal operators were younger than 35, and just last month the Agriculture Department announced that $19 million will be set aside for a program designed to help younger farmers and ranchers.

The sad fact is that farming and ranching is hard, back-breaking work.  There are a lot of young people who would like to experience farming, but unless they have land that’s been in their family, then it’s nearly impossible to break into.  According to Michael Duffy, a longtime chronicler of farm demographics who recently retired, the agricultural numbers aren’t nearly as dire as they sound.  Many farms are passed down to younger family members, and many farms are absorbed by larger farms, a process of consolidation that’s been going on for decades.  Duffy also noted that due to advances in technology, there are fewer farmers needed.

There are also opportunities available for younger farmers, such as selling directly to consumers at farmers’ markets.  The operators of large farms are typically younger than those who tend smaller farms.  The average age of an operator with $1 million or more in sales is 55, compared to the average age of 61 for a farmer with $1,000 or less in sales.

Danish Minecraft Experiment Goes Awry

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People have been talking a lot about minecraft since its release some two and a half years earlier.  The independent computer game, developed by Swedish gamers, allows the players to build structures out of 3-D cubes, much like legos.  Despite the game’s minimal graphics, which look like something out of the 1980s, it has become wildly popular thanks to the creative freedom it gives players and its addictive gameplay; as of early February 2014, it has sold over 35 million copies across all platforms.  To give you an idea of how popular this game has become, the Danish Geodata Agency just created the entire country of Denmark in Minecraft at a 1:1 scale.  The painstaking task, one of the biggest Minecraft creations of all time, was made up of about 4 trillion bricks and a whole terabyte of data.  The replica was built using the agency’s 3D elevation model, and was meant to be used as a teaching tool.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark: A scene from the game, after American tanks rolled into “Denmark”.

Despite efforts to protect the structure from outside players, players soon started to blow up this virtual Denmark.  The Danish Geodata Agency had disabled the ability to use the “dynamite” item on their Denmark, but had forgotten to disable another explosive tool in the game, the minecart with the dynamite item.  Players discovered this, and started setting off explosives in several different Danish towns, building American tanks and flags on top of the ruins.  According to Chris Hammeken, spokesman for the Danish Geodata Agency, they have no intentions to reboot Minecraft’s virtual Denmark, since elements being broken down and replaced is a major aspect of the game.  However, if buildings are removed and nothing new is created, then they plan to “occasionally” rebuild minor areas of the map.  However, you can download Minecraft’s Denmark map from the Danish Geodata Agency’s website.  It’s so far gotten over 200,000 downloads.  Hammeken claims that The Danish Geodata Agency is actually “very happy” to see players from around the world “creating fancy nice things” and having fun.

The World’s Underground Wonders

George T. Wittman’s newest blog post!

I recently came across an article about some of the most amazing underground wonders around the world.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been to as many of them as I’d like, but they all sound astounding to me.

On the island of Palawa in the Philippines is Puerto Princesa, an underground river that runs five miles underneath a limestone karst mountain and connect the Cabayugan River to the South China Sea.  Through underground guided rafting trips, you can see several large underground chambers, some of which are as wide as 390 feet and nearly 200 feet high.

The stone walls inside the Thrihnukagigur Volcano in Iceland are filled with a psychedelic sort of pattern.

Since the Middle Ages, the Turda Salt Mines in Transylvania have been excavated by generations of miners.  It’s currently a subterranean museum and recreation center, complete with basketball hoops, a mini-golf course, Ferris wheel and underground lake.  The mines even have halotherapy spa facilities, which treat respiratory problems through ionized air, pressure and humidity.

For the past 4,000 years, Thrihnukagigur Volcano in Iceland has been dormant.  Over the course of this time, the magma in the volcano somehow drained away, leaving behind amazing mineral coloration.  Visitors to the volcano enter the maw via a cable car nearly 400 feet down.

On the eastern border of the Chapada Diamantina range in northeast Brazil, the Poço Encantado (Enchanted Well) is a massive underground lake, with a natural window up above.  But just referring to it as an “underground lake” doesn’t do the Poço Encantado justice.  The water is so clear that you can see over 200 feet to the bottom of the lake, filled with ancient tree trunks and rock formations.

Back in 2000, La Cueva de los Cristales was discovered in the Naica Mine in Mexico, after water was pumped out of the small chamber.  The gypsum columns there are some of the largest natural crystals in the world.  Unfortunately, visiting this wonder is rather difficult, due to dangerous conditions: the chamber has near 100% humidity and reaches temperatures as high as 136 degrees, thanks to a pool of magma underneath the cave.

The glowworm caves look like something out of an episode of Star Trek or Star Wars.

After Peter Jackson filmed the epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in New Zealand, the oceanic island has since become the place to go for anything fantasy-related.  But there was one great feature of the island that Peter Jackson didn’t put into his epic blockbuster trilogy: the Waitomo Glowworm Caves a couple hours south of Auckland.  The caves are filled with New Zealand’s indigenous glowworm, the arachnocampa luminosa, which gives off a subtle blue glow that makes the underground caves look like something out of a sci-fi film.

Greenbrier, a swanky resort in south-eastern West Virginia, looks nondescript enough.  However, in 1956, the government built a bunker there to house Congress if a nuclear war were to break out.  The fallout shelter, since declassified, could house more than 1,100 people behind 25-ton doors.  The bunker was equipped with such features and facilities as a power plant, decontamination chambers, communications equipment, meeting rooms and a great hall for joint sessions.

Across the pond, as German fighter planes dropped bombs down onto England’s major cities during World War II, the British built a secret underground bunker in London.  Occupied by ministers, military personnel and Winston Churchill himself, the Cabinet War Rooms saw extensive use from the start to the end of World War II.  Much of the bunker has since become a museum, preserving many of the various artifacts used in that era, such as large maps full of pinpricks and even the swivel chair that Churchill used.

A screenshot of the morbid Capuchin ossuary.

San Clemente Basilica in Rome is steeped in history; built in the 12th century on top of a fourth-century church, itself built over a first-century home that stands next to a second-century temple dedicated to the all-male fertility cult of the sun god Mithras.  A 10-minute walk from the Basilica is the church of Santa Maria della Concezione, underneath which is a grim ossuary where the bones of 4,000 Capuchin monks were used to artistically decorate the space with chandeliers, coats of arms and archways.

For forty years in the first half of the 20th century, the eccentric immigrant Baldassare Forestiere built a subterranean home and garden in Fresno, CA, inspired by the ancient catacombs of his native Sicily.  Using nothing but farming tools, Forestiere dug about 10,000 square feet of rooms, a chapel and even an underground fishing pond.

10 Natural Oddities

George T. Wittman’s newest blog post!

A recent article on CNN.com talked about various natural oddities around the world.  While I haven’t gotten to see too many of them, I have ambitions to see as many of them as I can before I die.

In Antarctica, there is a blood-red waterfall staining the otherwise white ice of Taylor Glacier.  This was first seen by geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor, after whom Taylor glacier is named.  According to glaciologists and microbiologists, this waterfall’s red hue is due to an underground lake rich in iron.

In chilly Moncton, New Brunswick, there is a “magnetic hill”, that makes cars roll backward up the hill without power.  Nobody knows exactly why this is, and since its discovery in the 1930s, the “magnetic hill” has proven to be a major tourist attraction.

The Moeraki Boulders of New Zealand

Before 1963, the island of Surtsey, off the coast of Iceland, didn’t even exist.  However, an underwater volcano in the Westman Islands erupted, and when the volcanic activity finally settled in 1967, a small island, only 1 square mile, had seemingly emerged from the deep.  Since its “creation”, Surtsey has been eroded to half of its original size due to wind and water.  The Icelandic government has worked tirelessly to conserve the island, and therefore it is off limits to visitors.

Scattered across Koekohe Beach on the east coast of New Zealand South Island are large spherical boulders, formed millions of years ago on the ancient sea floor.  Over the years, these boulders have collected and hardened sediment and minerals around a core such as a fossil or shell, much like how Oysters form pearls.  While the “Moeraki Boulders” aren’t the only example of this, they are some of the largest examples in the world.

Between late April and the end of August, the sun never sets over Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Sea.  This phenomenon messes with many peoples’ body clocks, and many people lose track of what time of the day (or night) it is.

While it might look snowy, Pamukkale, Turkey, is actually covered in calcium carbonate deposits from 17 natural hot springs.  This area near present-day Denizli has been a destination for those who sought the therapeutic benefits of the mineral-rich springs, whose temperatures reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

In 1915, a prospector and his wife noticed tracks over the “Racetrack Playa” in Death Valley, California, that seemed to indicate that the stones there had traveled across the dry earth.  Since this was first discovered, nobody knows exactly what happened with the stones; theories abound, ranging from cosmic intervention to aliens.  However, scientists think that ice formed around the stones caused them to move and leave a trail in their wake.

Behind a small waterfall in Orchard Park, right outside of Buffalo, New York, there appears to be a flickering flame.  This is caused by a leak in the rock behind the waterfall, which allows 1 kilogram of methane gas to escape to the surface every day.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming has the highest concentration of geysers in any place in the world.  The most famous of these geysers is “Old Faithful”, which erupts every 55 to 120 minutes for two to five minutes.

The excessive lightning over Lake Maracaibo.

Because of its humidity, elevation and the clash of winds from the mountains and the sea, the southwestern corner of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela has the highest frequency of lightning activity in the world.  Lightning flashes fill the sky more than 200 nights per year, sometimes with 25 or more flashes every minute.  To give you an idea of how huge this is, the National Weather Service classifies anything more than 12 strikes per minute as “excessive”.

Top Places to Travel in 2014

George T. Wittman’s newest blog post!

A recent article in Travel and Leisure wrote about the top 25 places to travel in 2014.  The list ranged across five different continents; some of the locations were well-known, others not so much.  Many of them were really surprising.  Listed below are some of the places mentioned in the article:

Cape Town, South Africa: This old town, previously the center of the Dutch colony in South Africa, is quickly evolving into a new hip, trendy city.  It’s filled with edgy boutiques, independent galleries and exciting, forward-thinking restaurants.

Beautiful Little Corn Island

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua: This 1-square-mile island off the coast of Nicaragua is a real gem, with cheap fresh lobster, hammocks and a “blissfully slow” pace.  The island is filled with biking and walking trails, making every nook and cranny of the island accessible.

Warsaw, Poland: The cultural center of Poland, Warsaw is cheap, rich in history and is quickly filling up with creative energy.

Pangulasian Island, Philippines: An hour’s flight from Manila, Pangulasian Island is home to the newest “El Nido” resort.  In addition, the island was spared the recent typhoon.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: The future site of the 2016 Olympic Games, the city of Rio de Janeiro is quickly becoming infused with new energy.  Previously derelict slums are quickly bouncing back.

A photo of a picturesque fishing village on the coast of Uruguay.

Uruguay: This small South American nation hosts numerous idyllic, picturesque seaside towns that are quickly becoming a popular getaway destination for celebrities such as Shakira and Jason Wu.

Sochi, Russia: The site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi has been a popular vacation spot for Russians for years.

Palermo, Italy: While Palermo has had a troublesome history in the past, its popularity as a tourist destination is one the rise.  Wine tastings, delicious street food, nearby idyllic seaside villages, low-key hotels and fascinating modern art all make for a great vacation.

Tetiaroa, French Polynesia: The atoll of Tetiaroa has 12 islets so beautiful that they were used as a retreat for Polynesian royalty.

Santa Marta, Colombia: As the oldest city in Colombia, the city is rich in history; you can see native artifacts, in addition to the home of famed liberator Simón Bolívar.

Mokapu Beach, Hawaii: A dazzling 4 ½ mile stretch of beach, Mokapu beach has recently been revitalized by the resort Andaz Maui at Wailea.  The resort offers activities such as paddleboarding, swimming and sushi.