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> Modern agriculture is a highly skilled job done with millions of dollars of capital equipment. Unskilled laborers are more hindrance than help, and will be se
by jly 9y ago
> Modern agriculture is a highly skilled job done with millions of dollars of capital equipment. Unskilled laborers are more hindrance than help, and will be sent off to the "back 40" to indulge in mindless busywork.
I think the point being made in the original post is that modern agriculture has a lot of problems and this is a way to address some of those. Producing local foods in a sustainable way requires more labor and a more distributed structure, with many more individuals involved directly in the process. Market gardeners around the world produce high quality foods without millions of dollars of equipment. Anyone can be taught enough to be highly useful in this role.
- bilbo0s 9y agoJust as someone who's had to do the whole Farmer's Market thing for a while, (on the Capitol Square in Madison Wisconsin), I think I should point out that many many organic farmers do indeed use some fairly high tech tools and techniques to simplify the work. Different producers are using everything from the ultra high tech sort of "farm in a shipping container" systems inside of an area like Madison, to greenhouses that integrate natural climate control techniques out in places like Verona or Sun Prairie area, to gps assisted tilling out in areas like Spring Green. I think people would be surprised at how high tech agriculture has become. The original poster is correct when (s)he asserts that there would not be much meaningful work for an unskilled laborer in most sectors of modern agriculture. But that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.
- jdietrich 9y agoThe unskilled work that does exist in agriculture is highly seasonal - mainly picking and processing fruits and vegetables that are too fragile for machines to handle. You might be able to find jobs for a couple of hundred thousand people during the peak of the harvest, but what do you do with them for the other nine months of the year?