[IslandCrow]

The following article shows how the collapse in building in Spain has lead to Spanish workers to try an take back manual jobs from immigrants. This is not quite the back-to-the-farm scenario where manual labour replaces mechanical labour, but it is an interesting step along that line.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7883605.stm

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut, as Spain officially enters recession, Andres is one of a growing number of Spaniards who have been forced to join them on the land.

"It's seven years since I worked the fields," he says, "and I think we'll see a lot more Spaniards returning. In construction, I was earning twice what I make here - but building has simply stopped, there are no jobs. At least here, I'm guaranteed seven or eight months work."

Others see the same logic. In Huelva's heaving job centre, applicants queue to register for an agricultural employment scheme run by Andalucia's regional government. The chosen recruits will pick strawberries, oranges, onions and asparagus. Well over 80% of applicants are Spaniards.

Their eagerness to take what some regard as a backward step is easily explained.

[threadbear]

I hope the many displaced Chinese will have this option, eventually.

For many, returning to their rural roots is not a possibility because their families' farmland has been sold off to make room for shopping malls, office high-rises and apartment complexes -- leaving them with no safety net. Even those lucky enough to have kept their farming plots have been hit hard by a drought -- the country's worst in 50 years, according to the government -- which has affected up to 80 percent of the land for winter crops.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03287.html

[Dukkha]

This is happening in Thailand, too. A lot of the younger people are coming back from the big cities where they worked in construction/industry to join mum and dad/grandma and grandpa in the villages. The same thing happened in 1997 during/after the Asian economic crisis.