When I'm introduced to a new acquaintance, the introduction often ends with, "Bryan farms." Like it's the most interesting thing about me. Well, maybe it is.

A few years ago I was introduced that way and the fellow said, "Why would you choose to live way out in the country away from everything."

"Well," I replied,"we like the peace and quiet. We like having space around us. But we're just outside town. We're, like, two miles from the nearest Starbucks."

"I see," he smirked. "You're one of those 'cappuccino cowboys.'"

I should have felt insulted. Maybe I did for a second. Then I thought, "Well, yeah. If that means I farm for fun, that's true. If it means my motivations are more artistic and philosophical than they are economic, then I plead 'guilty as charged.'"

We started calling our farm Rancho Cappuccino.

Industrial agriculture has turned a lot of farmers into underpaid laborers on their own land. The pressures of the industrial model prevent creativity. They grow what the system tells them to grow, in the way the system tells them to grow it. There's too little whimsy in it, and too little joy. Their day, like bad coffee, is a routine grind. The opposite would, I guess, be cappuccino.

True, we're lucky enough to make a good living elsewhere so we can enjoy the farm as a refuge, an avocation, a source of physical and spiritual nourishment: an amateur work of art.

It's sad, though, isn't it that just a few years ago most farms were all those things.

If being a real farmer, or a real cowboy, means trading in my agricultural whimsy and my creativity for a grind of conformity and worry then I don't want to be a "real" cowboy. I'm happy being a cappuccino cowboy. I'm right where I belong here at Rancho Cappuccino.

Climate change fills the news channels right now and arrests the attention of people all over the world. The statistics and, more importantly, the images are startling. The average global temperature has been going up since 1850 and is accelerating. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are all at historic highs.[1] These so-called “greenhouse gases” allow the sun’s ultraviolet radiation to rain down on the earth’s surface, but they trap the infrared radiation emitted by the warm earth. The planet warms up.

Take a look at any historic comparison of alpine glaciers or polar ice caps. They are shrinking. Rapidly.

 Most scientists agree that human beings are causing global warming. We dig up fossil fuels and burn them, releasing carbon dioxide. We blanket our agricultural fields with nitrogen-based fertilizers that fill the air with nitrous oxide. We raise billions of agricultural animals in circumstances that create unnatural amounts of methane. We burn the forests and plow up the grasslands that used to capture carbon dioxide from the air and deposit it in the soil. Rich people are making the biggest contribution to these problems. According to CNN, the average American's annual carbon footprint is about 2,000 times greater than that of the average resident of the African nation of Chad. And the average resident of the UK will generate as much atmospheric carbon dioxide in one day as a Kenyan will in an entire year. Overall, the United Nations estimates that the carbon footprint of the world's 1 billion poorest people represents just 3 percent of the global total. Of all the carbon dioxide deposited in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, 80 percent of the world's emissions was generated by 20 percent of the inhabitants of the world's wealthiest nations.[2]

It is, therefore, tempting to think that we can solve the climate-change problem by tightening the belts of the rich. But I’ll reiterate the conclusion of my rough analysis of this situation: If the U.S. and Western Europe both cut their per capital energy consumption in half over the next 20 years and the developing world holds its per capita consumption steady, we’ll keep on emitting greenhouse gases at the same harmful rate we are emitting right now. Population growth will erase all our progress.

Furthermore, even if none of our planet’s new human residents owns an internal-combustion engine, they will still need to burn wood and plant gardens. Deforestation and desertification are symptoms of human overpopulation, and those symptoms are spreading.

The reasons for the inequitable distribution of human nourishment, worldwide, are complex and hotly debated. Many regions of the world still don’t have reliable systems of distribution. Political corruption and corporate greed take their toll. Starvation has, true to Malthus’ predictions, never been eradicated. We’ve had the means to solve the worldwide hunger problem but, apparently, not the motivation. Our agricultural tools have been equal to this task for several decades, but our political devices have fallen short.  In the wealthy parts of the world people have never, seemingly, been sufficiently inspired to overcome the challenges of feeding those in the Earth’s poorer neighborhoods. It is clearly not a simple matter to distribute surplus Iowa corn to the pantries of drought-famished Africa. Evidence would suggest that good nutrition, worldwide, is not impossible, only improbable. And contemporary phenomena like climate change and population growth only make that challenge more vexing.

As the planet becomes more heavily populated with human beings, lines of communication become more efficient. As we’ve become more crowded, we’ve also become more aware, generally, of the circumstances of human life worldwide. Today’s poor Mexican laborer knows that the price of his tortillas goes up when ethanol producers in the United States put new demands on the grain supply. The soccer mom in New England fills the fuel tank on her minivan with at least a general awareness that she’s having an effect on the global economy. Suddenly we’re conscious that our decision to drive a 12-mile-per-gallon SUV may increase food prices for a poor family somewhere, straining to buy a few pounds of grain.