Willie Nelson’s ‘back to the land’ message for America | News & Politics | News & Comment

orchestra, no less.

There another scent, too, this one seeping from the air vents: weed. Nelson, named "the World's Mellowest Man" by Rolling Stone magazine, is a devoted supporter of NORML, the marijuana legalisation campaign, and sees no reason to quit smoking now.

There is a new Willie Nelson story going around: so much smoke from the bus got into the ventilation system of the Italian restaurant on the other side of the pavement that the manager searched the bathrooms for diners breaking the city's smoking ban.

America’s been living too high off the hog, and now we’re going to suffer

Nelson's devotion to doing things his way, and no other, has seen three marriages and steep ups-and-down in his career, a nearly-ruinous run-in over more than $1m in unpaid taxes, and numerous close scrapes over marijuana.

But as the bubble of America's boom years bursts, Nelson suddenly finds himself with the status of national treasure. There is nostalgia involved: a Willie Nelson show can take an aging Baby Boomer facing the loss of his pension back to the glory days of the 1970s when Nelson toured with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in the Highwaymen, and everyone could be a rebel riding a motorcycle through Monument Valley with a joint in his mouth.

Neil Young, left, Willie Nelson, centre, and Nelson’s son Lukas Nelson perform at Farm Aid in New York in 2007

He represents a sort of wisdom too. Nelson is old enough to remember the Depression and picking cotton, and a different kind of America.

"There used to be 8m farmers," he says. "Now there are 2m. Politics and price fixing, corporations, drove them off the land and changed our way of life and our values. America's been living too high off the hog, and now we’re going to suffer."

It is a message from an eccentric old troubadour, but it is one that is playing better than ever.

FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 24, 2009

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The trouble with Willie's 'green message' is that bio-diesel has been exposed as a pipe dream for some time now by people who can think past slogans. To grow enough bio-fuel to replace all fossil fuel used in cars and trucks would take more land than is currently used for growing food. So it's eat or drive, a simple enough choice. Of course, for affluent rock stars in their tour bus bubbles, it might well appear an attractive option, but I would expect more joined up thinking from someone as mature as Willie, especially as he was apparently trained in agriculture way back when. No, Willie isn't going to save America and the Earth, he might feel good about himself though. We've seen rock stars get involved in world affairs before, they are usually ill-informed, presumptuous and simplistic and invariably more about the ego than anything else; Geldoff and Bono are good examples. They should stick to what they know and leave important matters to those capable of thinking a bit more deeply.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 10:57am on February 24, 2009

I think Willies' point about returning people to the fields is a good one - provided it was the entire political and financial ruling class (Ron Paul excepted) that were the first to be turned into useful farm workers.

Posted by Alan Pond at 1:46pm on February 24, 2009

Bio-diesel from "conventional" crops such as soy or sunflower would take a lot of land, but it's possible to get a yield from algae that is 100 times higher than sunflower or 200 times soy, as well as not needing prime agricultural land.

Posted by Bob Harle at 3:03pm on February 24, 2009

BobH - to emphasise your point on algae, it grows best on sewage sludge in settling ponds and, given that the modern world is fulla s**t, that's an apparently unlimited resource. Once the algae is harvested the remaining sludge can be further digested ANaerobically (without oxygen) to produce methane, another highly portable transport fuel. What remains after the tertiary phase is an almost perfect, odourless fertiliser and soil booster, desperately needed after decades of hammering their midwest plains with (oil based) fertilisers. I applaud AlanP's suggestion that the politico/financial class be the first sent back to the land (for re-education...?). An old anti war idea in the 20thC was that the first soldiers sent to war should be the oldest citizens & pollies most keen on negotiating with hi-ex. As well as removing the main casus belli it would certainly ameliorate, if not totally cure, such fevered phantasies as world domination & gun boat diplomacy.

Posted by allan kessing at 11:34pm on July 11, 2009