4 ms·

>Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Ba

by lsc 8y ago

>Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)? If I inherited a bunch of debt-free land and equipment from my dad rather than a bunch of tech skills and contacts? sure, things would be very different. But I didn't, and agriculture is less than 2% of the labor force, and most of those people are hired workers, not the owner-operators, which is usually what we mean by "farmer" rather than "farm hand" For that matter, the farmers of my famiy's ancestral lands? Both inherited family lands and are highly educated. Yeah, there's still physical work involved, but figuring out how to operate these million dollar machines they use? at least as compex as operating the computers I use; and figuring how to fertalize and otherwise maintain the soil quality? I'd argue is probably a lot more complex, and higher risk.

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
As long as one doesn’t own land and has to rely on hired labour, there is no point in farming near a city. As a hobby, yes. Otherwise, no.
- lsc 8y ago
  >As long as one doesn’t own land and has to rely on hired labour, there is no point in farming near a city. As a hobby, yes. Otherwise, no. so, my understanding is that most of the farming that happens outside of CA, cereal crops and the like, is super capital intensive, but not very labor intensive. On the farm I was speaking of before that has been in my family for some time (though it has consolidated; there's one nuclear family that operates land that used to belong to a bunch of family units) - that one farm is mostly operated by one couple (and, of course, a whole bunch of equipment) mostly growing things like corn, soybeans and wheat. Of course, the sort of vegetables you see grown in California are a lot more labor intensive. I actually think your perception of rent vs buying land might be reversed? Land near cities is in high demand for speculation... for building houses on. So the purchase price would be higher than rural land. But if you are renting it out for agricultural use? Growing cereal crops near town isn't going to generate a whole lot more value than growing cereal crops in very rural areas, so I don't imagine the rent is that much different (though there's probably more "I can sell it to a developer" clauses in land near towns) - I mean, the thing is that a lot of places have zoning restrictions that make it really hard to convert ag land to residential use. Again, the equation is probably different if you are farming vegetables; I don't really care if my cereal grains are shipped halfway across the country, but I'm willing to pay a significant premium for local, fresh vegetables. On the other hand, unless you are farming fresh vegetables and charging a premium, there's no benefit to farming near a city, and even then, it's probably small. So, uh, were I able to, I'd probably delete my comment that you responded to, just 'cause the question was "would you see a bump by moving your farm to a urban area" not "could you make a decent living at farming, and would you need to be educated"
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    Many points. I will address them and this is just my 2c: 1. I think there has to be local food and food security in the form of local urban Ag even for big cities. Why? 2. Because. Supply chain is convoluted. We are entering a whole diff timeline when fossil fuel based Ag is just not going to be sustainable. 3. We are losing habitat and degrading environment by compartmentalising Ag. Even in rural Ag areas, watertable is polluted and the pristine fruit orchards have to be spared. Even if you practice organic ag(assuming), just the act of timing releases fungal spores from the soil causing valley fever. It’s a big deal here in central California. Children of farmers suffer high rates of asthma. They are obese and farmers are increasingly diabetic. Obesity from fast food is also a form of malnutrition. 4. It’s ironic that in the Bay Area, we have built housing on the most fertile soils in the country..the world even. It beggars belief! 5. During a drought, most of our Ag went outside as exports. Our food came from South America. The commodity crops of Midwest was exported or sold for ethanol or HFCS or as fodder for hogs which is another water thirsty commodity. Everything we do, we are not taking water into account. It’s the next ‘gold’ and will be scarce and climate change reliant. These are serious issues. 6. Another reason food must be grown in cities for local food security as well as wastage is because billions of dollars lost every year because of supply chain. Too long. Everything is from elsewhere. 7. It’s easier now because of technology and indoor Ag. We must start protecting watersheds and aquifers..rehabilitate soil and start redirecting. It’s possible now because we have knowledge and awareness ..and we have technology to make up. What we need is a change in attitude and the political will as in the people demanding politicians that we can no longer have ‘politics as usual’. Politics of water..politics of development...politics of food and trade in food. 8. Cities are quietly allowing zone changes from Ag and protected lands to real estate development. In CA..developers lobby has tremendous clout and want to challenge even CEQA..which is our California environmental quality act. 9. A lot of Ag land is actually owned by foreign investors. China, Middle East investors especially. How can Ag land be owned by foreigners? But it happens. Farm REITs are tapped into by investors for pension funds and insurance companies. 10. The entire economy of the USA must go to Gamblers Anonymous because it’s run on speculation. And it’s not even intelligent speculation. 11. If I were the Queen of the world(sadly..for the world..I am not)...I would make sure half the land is returned back to nature. I wouldn’t incentivize procreation of humans at the cost of other species. There is a certainly a cost to introducing more humans to this planet. I would look into technology to produce more without destroying our planet. Until then, we must tread carefully. 12. I don’t see a future in farming unless we automate farming. And it’s possible. But right now, it seems like what we do is just fine. It’s not because the price we have paid for farming wrt loss of soil biome, pollution from petrochemical based Ag processes and subsidied food(esp grains and dairy) and the reliance on animal based food that has introduced a greater problem than co2. Methane. Loss of carbon sequestration from lost grasslands and forests. Not to mention the staggering number of species loss and habitat destruction. 13. Without pointing fingers, we must move forward and implement new strategies. Live on half the land mass and return the rest to nature. We now have technology and know-how to do least harm and still live well. But why don’t we do that? Please don’t delete anything you wrote. I enjoyed this opportunity to share my thoughts(even though some of them were digressions) as they have been weighing heavily. I wanted to buy a 40-100 acre farm some five years ago and not being a generational farmer, I wanted to get my toes wet, as it were..in a small acreage. As I framed my little acre and spoke to other farmers and read more about what’s happening, I don’t think I am interested in farming unless I can do it differently. Farming as we know it is wasteful and harmful. In more ways than one. This will likely be my last year if I can’t find a whole systems design for intelligent automation in farms. It makes me sad but I can’t be part of this circus. I am losing anyways.
randomdata 8y ago
Perhaps I wasn't clear, but my comment wasn't really about agriculture specifically. What I meant was that you are able to make more in the Bay Area doing tech than doing tech in points outside of the Bay Area because of it being the centre of tech. Farmers are able to make more in rural areas than they would doing farming in the city because rural areas are the centre of agriculture. Farmers would not make more money farming in the Bay Area simply due to it being a densely populated area. Quite the opposite. They would take a massive pay cut if they tried.
- lsc 8y ago
  ah, yes, that is completely true; some products are better produced in some areas than in other areas. My argument is generalizing this to "if you fix things or otherwise provide services, you are better off fixing things or otherwise providing services to wealthy people than doing the same for people who are less wealthy" (edit: you can substitute "productive" for "wealthy" here, if you want to change 'are better off' to 'add more productivity to the system' in the previous sentence. Or you can leave it as-is, either way works, really.) Which seems to me to follow, because my tech job involves a whole lot of "service" type fixing things for people. I'm a SysAdmin, and let me tell you, getting woken up in the middle of the night for a billion dollar product is way more renumerative (and better in other ways, too) than getting woken up in the middle of the night for a million dollar product. My argument is that what I experience as a sysadmin would probably be pretty similar if I fixed cars instead; Fixing cars for wealthy people is likely to be a lot more renumerative than doing the same for people who aren't wealthy, and regardless of the direction of causality, the correlation between degrees and money is very strong; that's where I was going with my original point that as a dude without a degree who fixes things and helps people, I'm better off around educated people than otherwise. Of course, you would be totally right to come back with other location based jobs; like if I were a mechanic, the path to income maximization would probably be to upgrade my skills to large diesel, and then move near some oil fields or something; jobs that are dependent on location are totally a thing. But most jobs depend on the people you are around more than any other location.

by lsc 8y ago

jelliclesfarm 8y ago

As long as one doesn’t own land and has to rely on hired labour, there is no point in farming near a city. As a hobby, yes. Otherwise, no.

lsc 8y ago
>As long as one doesn’t own land and has to rely on hired labour, there is no point in farming near a city. As a hobby, yes. Otherwise, no. so, my understanding is that most of the farming that happens outside of CA, cereal crops and the like, is super capital intensive, but not very labor intensive. On the farm I was speaking of before that has been in my family for some time (though it has consolidated; there's one nuclear family that operates land that used to belong to a bunch of family units) - that one farm is mostly operated by one couple (and, of course, a whole bunch of equipment) mostly growing things like corn, soybeans and wheat. Of course, the sort of vegetables you see grown in California are a lot more labor intensive. I actually think your perception of rent vs buying land might be reversed? Land near cities is in high demand for speculation... for building houses on. So the purchase price would be higher than rural land. But if you are renting it out for agricultural use? Growing cereal crops near town isn't going to generate a whole lot more value than growing cereal crops in very rural areas, so I don't imagine the rent is that much different (though there's probably more "I can sell it to a developer" clauses in land near towns) - I mean, the thing is that a lot of places have zoning restrictions that make it really hard to convert ag land to residential use. Again, the equation is probably different if you are farming vegetables; I don't really care if my cereal grains are shipped halfway across the country, but I'm willing to pay a significant premium for local, fresh vegetables. On the other hand, unless you are farming fresh vegetables and charging a premium, there's no benefit to farming near a city, and even then, it's probably small. So, uh, were I able to, I'd probably delete my comment that you responded to, just 'cause the question was "would you see a bump by moving your farm to a urban area" not "could you make a decent living at farming, and would you need to be educated"
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago
  Many points. I will address them and this is just my 2c: 1. I think there has to be local food and food security in the form of local urban Ag even for big cities. Why? 2. Because. Supply chain is convoluted. We are entering a whole diff timeline when fossil fuel based Ag is just not going to be sustainable. 3. We are losing habitat and degrading environment by compartmentalising Ag. Even in rural Ag areas, watertable is polluted and the pristine fruit orchards have to be spared. Even if you practice organic ag(assuming), just the act of timing releases fungal spores from the soil causing valley fever. It’s a big deal here in central California. Children of farmers suffer high rates of asthma. They are obese and farmers are increasingly diabetic. Obesity from fast food is also a form of malnutrition. 4. It’s ironic that in the Bay Area, we have built housing on the most fertile soils in the country..the world even. It beggars belief! 5. During a drought, most of our Ag went outside as exports. Our food came from South America. The commodity crops of Midwest was exported or sold for ethanol or HFCS or as fodder for hogs which is another water thirsty commodity. Everything we do, we are not taking water into account. It’s the next ‘gold’ and will be scarce and climate change reliant. These are serious issues. 6. Another reason food must be grown in cities for local food security as well as wastage is because billions of dollars lost every year because of supply chain. Too long. Everything is from elsewhere. 7. It’s easier now because of technology and indoor Ag. We must start protecting watersheds and aquifers..rehabilitate soil and start redirecting. It’s possible now because we have knowledge and awareness ..and we have technology to make up. What we need is a change in attitude and the political will as in the people demanding politicians that we can no longer have ‘politics as usual’. Politics of water..politics of development...politics of food and trade in food. 8. Cities are quietly allowing zone changes from Ag and protected lands to real estate development. In CA..developers lobby has tremendous clout and want to challenge even CEQA..which is our California environmental quality act. 9. A lot of Ag land is actually owned by foreign investors. China, Middle East investors especially. How can Ag land be owned by foreigners? But it happens. Farm REITs are tapped into by investors for pension funds and insurance companies. 10. The entire economy of the USA must go to Gamblers Anonymous because it’s run on speculation. And it’s not even intelligent speculation. 11. If I were the Queen of the world(sadly..for the world..I am not)...I would make sure half the land is returned back to nature. I wouldn’t incentivize procreation of humans at the cost of other species. There is a certainly a cost to introducing more humans to this planet. I would look into technology to produce more without destroying our planet. Until then, we must tread carefully. 12. I don’t see a future in farming unless we automate farming. And it’s possible. But right now, it seems like what we do is just fine. It’s not because the price we have paid for farming wrt loss of soil biome, pollution from petrochemical based Ag processes and subsidied food(esp grains and dairy) and the reliance on animal based food that has introduced a greater problem than co2. Methane. Loss of carbon sequestration from lost grasslands and forests. Not to mention the staggering number of species loss and habitat destruction. 13. Without pointing fingers, we must move forward and implement new strategies. Live on half the land mass and return the rest to nature. We now have technology and know-how to do least harm and still live well. But why don’t we do that? Please don’t delete anything you wrote. I enjoyed this opportunity to share my thoughts(even though some of them were digressions) as they have been weighing heavily. I wanted to buy a 40-100 acre farm some five years ago and not being a generational farmer, I wanted to get my toes wet, as it were..in a small acreage. As I framed my little acre and spoke to other farmers and read more about what’s happening, I don’t think I am interested in farming unless I can do it differently. Farming as we know it is wasteful and harmful. In more ways than one. This will likely be my last year if I can’t find a whole systems design for intelligent automation in farms. It makes me sad but I can’t be part of this circus. I am losing anyways.

randomdata 8y ago

Perhaps I wasn't clear, but my comment wasn't really about agriculture specifically. What I meant was that you are able to make more in the Bay Area doing tech than doing tech in points outside of the Bay Area because of it being the centre of tech. Farmers are able to make more in rural areas than they would doing farming in the city because rural areas are the centre of agriculture. Farmers would not make more money farming in the Bay Area simply due to it being a densely populated area. Quite the opposite. They would take a massive pay cut if they tried.

lsc 8y ago
ah, yes, that is completely true; some products are better produced in some areas than in other areas. My argument is generalizing this to "if you fix things or otherwise provide services, you are better off fixing things or otherwise providing services to wealthy people than doing the same for people who are less wealthy" (edit: you can substitute "productive" for "wealthy" here, if you want to change 'are better off' to 'add more productivity to the system' in the previous sentence. Or you can leave it as-is, either way works, really.) Which seems to me to follow, because my tech job involves a whole lot of "service" type fixing things for people. I'm a SysAdmin, and let me tell you, getting woken up in the middle of the night for a billion dollar product is way more renumerative (and better in other ways, too) than getting woken up in the middle of the night for a million dollar product. My argument is that what I experience as a sysadmin would probably be pretty similar if I fixed cars instead; Fixing cars for wealthy people is likely to be a lot more renumerative than doing the same for people who aren't wealthy, and regardless of the direction of causality, the correlation between degrees and money is very strong; that's where I was going with my original point that as a dude without a degree who fixes things and helps people, I'm better off around educated people than otherwise. Of course, you would be totally right to come back with other location based jobs; like if I were a mechanic, the path to income maximization would probably be to upgrade my skills to large diesel, and then move near some oil fields or something; jobs that are dependent on location are totally a thing. But most jobs depend on the people you are around more than any other location.