This Bull Market in commodities will last longer

Jim Rogers : This Bull Market in commodities started in 1999 it got many years to go in my view , the reason we've had the bull market in commodities is the same reason we had several bull markets in history in commodities , this happened many many times in history , when you have long bull market in commodities followed by long bear market in commodities followed by long bull market again , in the 80s and 90s there was very little money invested in productive capacity to bring new commodities on the stream the last huge oil field in the world THE ELEPHANT , The Elephant was discovered i the 1960s or before , the Alaskan oil fields are in decline the Mexican oil fields are in serious decline the north sea is in decline the UK was exporting oil for about 25 years now the UK imports oil again Malaysia has been exporting oil for decades within few years they will be importing oil , Indonesia is a member of OPEC they are getting thrown out of OPEC because they now import oil after decades of being a huge oil exporter , 15 years ago China was the second largest exporter of oil in the world now they are the second largest importer of oil in the world , oil fields deplete mines deplete there has been only one lead mine open in the last 30 years , the last lead smelt that was built in the United States was built in 1969 , you can see that the production of most commodities is Under Distress , we are having problems agriculture is even worse we have been consuming more food and agricultural products than we have been producing for the past decade inventories are now near historic lows but the agriculture situation is much worse than that the average age of farmers in America is 58 years old the average age of farmers in Japan is 66 , the highest suicide rate in the UK is amongst agricultural workers and farmers because it has been such a terrible business , hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers commit suicide every year the average age of farmers in Australia is 58 , all of you are reasonably very well educated I suspect very few of the people that you went to school with became farmers , farming has been a bad business for thirty years , farming is going to be a great business a great profession for the next thirty years , I try to tell young people these days not to go to Wall Street not to go to the City of London but to become farmers or miners because that where the action is going to be in the next few decades , we are having a major shift away from the financial types to the people who produce real goods farmers miners oilmen lumberjacks that's where the future is going to be as Wall street and the City of London continue in decline , this bull market in commodities might last longer than previous bull markets because with what's going on in the world people are afraid to open new mines people are afraid to expand capacity in agriculture or oil so this bull market might last longer than previous bull markets it certainly has many years to go , in my own portfolio I own mainly commodities with a special emphasis on agriculture and precious metals I own currencies because when I see what's happening with the currency market I have sold short selling short is something you do when you things will be declining you can't make money when things decline I have sold short shares in Europe shares of American technology companies and I have sold short emerging markets shares - in RBS Conference Vienna Austria