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Jim Rogers believes the finance industry is about to slip into secular decline. That's why the famed investor advises young people to pursue careers in farming rather than in finance. "If you've got young people who don't know what to do, I'd urge them not to get MBAs, but to get agriculture degrees," Rogers told CNBC.com.

That's because the financial commentator and author of "Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets" is bearish about the entire financial field. "Finance has been good the past 30 years, but it was not good the 30 years before that, and it's happening again," Rogers said. "Finance is in decline. In the future, the center of the world will not be finance—it's going to be the producers of real goods." Economist Robert Shiller recently raised the related question of whether the "best and the brightest" are doing to the world a disservice by going into finance. In a September column in Project Syndicate, the Yale economics professor asked: "Are too many of our most talented people choosing careers in finance—and, more specifically, in trading, speculating, and other allegedly 'unproductive' activities?" (Read more: Want to get an MBA? So do a lot of others)