5 ms·

Of course they don't understand it, their field is technology. Agriculture requires years of specialisation and most people here if they do have a degree are co

Of course they don't understand it, their field is technology. Agriculture requires years of specialisation and most people here if they do have a degree are computer scientists, doctors, biologists, etc. But it's rare to find someone who has genuine passion and knowledge of agriculture. It is far removed from the city lifestyle and it is incredibly hard to break into, both for land reasons and because it's a hard job. Moreover, agricultural sciences is probably just not a very commonly pursued degree for people in the city (citation needed). So that brings me to my main point: disrupting an industry is usually done by people who want money when all the other good ideas have been taken. There is nothing wrong with this, but the cost with this fast paced approach is that the oldest and most complex industries like agriculture are going to put you in your place if you haven't done the work to understand them.

thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
Agreed. I grew up in rural Australia, when I moved to the city it was funny to see people talk about farmers in a willy nilly fashion. Farms are extremely hard to build, and the knowledge to run them has to be built into tradition. I'd wager if a governments policies bankrupted a large amount of them, you could almost starve the nation with no remedy. It would take lifetimes before anyone learnt how to till the land again.
- quacked 6y ago
  I agree that farmers are misunderstood and under-valued by people who are only able to live in stability because of the ability of farms to deliver food to them, but isn't farm complexity able to be documented and analyzed in a similar fashion as other "very complex" fields like law and finance? It seems like farmers are still beholden to long "if-then" chains and risk analysis (what to plant, where to plant, how to plant, etc. based on predictive yield), just that the underlying mathematics hasn't been as accessibly documented because it's not as profitable. So "generational knowledge and tradition" are important, but I don't see how that changes the fact that this sort of thing can be written down and analyzed. (Edit: I should clarify that I am not in favor of "disrupting agriculture" and I also do not think that mathematicians can somehow usurp farmers and plan better farms than the ones that already exist. I'm just wondering what's stopping the logic and practices of the ones that already exist from being documented and reproduced without "lifetimes" passing, as you say.)
  - thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
    I think you're right to believe that because it is true and I skirted over why I believe it takes generations. It is not impossible but difficult to document how to do effective farming because every farm has its own individual needs. And what may be true for one farm will likely not be true for another. Hence relying on first hand knowledge, albeit extremely fallible, is more reliable than reading a book and then destroying your crop for a year. (Obviously farmers read, study and improve) The main reason would be location. - How does water irrigate around your property? Where is the clay? Where does the water lock in when it sinks in different acres? What happens when there is a drought in this area? What happens when it floods? What should you do when there is extreme weather? - What makes the soil in this locale good? What is it naturally good at growing? How should you replenish the soil? What native wildlife contributes to the soil? What insects plague the area and do they have decade long life cycle bursts? What to do when a swarm of locust come? - When does your first frost generally occur? What plants can you grow through a frost? Maybe Kale will survive because although there is frost, you live in a valley where the humidity is higher so the Kale can live. You can't grow X crop because the wind is ever so slightly stronger every 5 years because of atmospheric shifts. And just to make it more fun, sprinkle on the problem of economics(supply/demand) and logistics. Also it would be hard not to meet a farmer who calls it a "way of life" because it absolutely is. They live far away from the spoils of civilisation, work incredible hours and live isolated lifestyles. They laugh at city folk because a city man "wouldn't last a week on the farm", which is probably true. Fun fact: Australian farmers have twice the national suicide rate than the average man.
    - quacked 6y ago
      That all makes complete sense, and the misunderstanding of "tech people" made obvious from your paragraph of questions that farmers have to answer. Computers always do what you tell them to. It sounds like farms do not, even when you give them the "right" instructions. "No farmers, no food", after all, and yet for some reason the suicide rates stay high. It's the same among American farmers. Dairy farms are shutting down at high rates in Wisconsin, where I'm from. What can the spoiled children of civilization to do help farmers? What can I do? I didn't even know about this plight until I was out of engineering school.
- c54 6y ago
  This is what happened in Soviet Russia (productive farmers were deemed class traitors, shipped off to siberia, and obviously net farming productivity collapsed), Ukraine leading up to the Holodomor (knock on effects from russia’s actions), and in Mao’s china (government mandated agricultural actions forced farmers away from their evolved / cultural practices and caused food production collapse). Systems like this are more complex than the foolish give them credit for being!
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Mao's Four Pests Campaign was particularly disastrous and ended killing millions in famine. He decided that sparrows, which ate some fruits and seeds, should be destroyed. He didn't realize that they also eat locust larva and other pests, which exploded in population without sparrows. Those pests ended up killing massive amounts of crops after the people were ordered to eliminate all sparrows and their eggs -- it ended in widespread starvation.
logicNSci 6y ago
Specialization sure, but science is universal. Unless agriculture is built on trade secrets or art, you can contribute. This is one of my criticisms of Medical. It's not a science or the barrier to entry would be significantly lower, and as a result cost would be lower. Degrees are good, but not necessary if you can do math and get experience.
- neffy 6y ago
  The difficulty with medicine lies in attempting to control the death count involved in gaining the experience. Some supervision required.
- Skunkleton 6y ago
  There are lots of not-fully-understood processes in the world that only work because we lucked into some way of doing them. If you come at these problems with a scientific mindset but with no real experience, you are going to have a bad time.
- nradov 6y ago
  There is a lot more to medicine than just math and science. That is not a sound basis for criticizing the field. You'll have to do better than that.
  - logicNSci 6y ago
    >There is a lot more to medicine than just math and science This is the problem.
    - nradov 6y ago
      That is not a problem. It's simply a fact that you'll have to accept.
- mespe 6y ago
  So, in my grad program in ag, we had a Bay-area ML startup come in to give a seminar on how they were revolutionizing agriculture. The presented their findings on how to increase yields (which they claimed could only be understood from their algorithm). The problem they were diving into was well understood, and has been researched to death for the last 100+ years. And they had the relationship backwards, not understanding their "input" to increase yields was actually a response to low yields. They were the opposite of helpful, but rather a waste of our time. As with anything, it helps to know the current state of knowledge before you jump into contribute. An understanding of math doesn't get you there.

thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago

Agreed. I grew up in rural Australia, when I moved to the city it was funny to see people talk about farmers in a willy nilly fashion. Farms are extremely hard to build, and the knowledge to run them has to be built into tradition. I'd wager if a governments policies bankrupted a large amount of them, you could almost starve the nation with no remedy. It would take lifetimes before anyone learnt how to till the land again.

quacked 6y ago
I agree that farmers are misunderstood and under-valued by people who are only able to live in stability because of the ability of farms to deliver food to them, but isn't farm complexity able to be documented and analyzed in a similar fashion as other "very complex" fields like law and finance? It seems like farmers are still beholden to long "if-then" chains and risk analysis (what to plant, where to plant, how to plant, etc. based on predictive yield), just that the underlying mathematics hasn't been as accessibly documented because it's not as profitable. So "generational knowledge and tradition" are important, but I don't see how that changes the fact that this sort of thing can be written down and analyzed. (Edit: I should clarify that I am not in favor of "disrupting agriculture" and I also do not think that mathematicians can somehow usurp farmers and plan better farms than the ones that already exist. I'm just wondering what's stopping the logic and practices of the ones that already exist from being documented and reproduced without "lifetimes" passing, as you say.)
- thomasfromcdnjs 6y ago
  I think you're right to believe that because it is true and I skirted over why I believe it takes generations. It is not impossible but difficult to document how to do effective farming because every farm has its own individual needs. And what may be true for one farm will likely not be true for another. Hence relying on first hand knowledge, albeit extremely fallible, is more reliable than reading a book and then destroying your crop for a year. (Obviously farmers read, study and improve) The main reason would be location. - How does water irrigate around your property? Where is the clay? Where does the water lock in when it sinks in different acres? What happens when there is a drought in this area? What happens when it floods? What should you do when there is extreme weather? - What makes the soil in this locale good? What is it naturally good at growing? How should you replenish the soil? What native wildlife contributes to the soil? What insects plague the area and do they have decade long life cycle bursts? What to do when a swarm of locust come? - When does your first frost generally occur? What plants can you grow through a frost? Maybe Kale will survive because although there is frost, you live in a valley where the humidity is higher so the Kale can live. You can't grow X crop because the wind is ever so slightly stronger every 5 years because of atmospheric shifts. And just to make it more fun, sprinkle on the problem of economics(supply/demand) and logistics. Also it would be hard not to meet a farmer who calls it a "way of life" because it absolutely is. They live far away from the spoils of civilisation, work incredible hours and live isolated lifestyles. They laugh at city folk because a city man "wouldn't last a week on the farm", which is probably true. Fun fact: Australian farmers have twice the national suicide rate than the average man.
  - quacked 6y ago
    That all makes complete sense, and the misunderstanding of "tech people" made obvious from your paragraph of questions that farmers have to answer. Computers always do what you tell them to. It sounds like farms do not, even when you give them the "right" instructions. "No farmers, no food", after all, and yet for some reason the suicide rates stay high. It's the same among American farmers. Dairy farms are shutting down at high rates in Wisconsin, where I'm from. What can the spoiled children of civilization to do help farmers? What can I do? I didn't even know about this plight until I was out of engineering school.
c54 6y ago
This is what happened in Soviet Russia (productive farmers were deemed class traitors, shipped off to siberia, and obviously net farming productivity collapsed), Ukraine leading up to the Holodomor (knock on effects from russia’s actions), and in Mao’s china (government mandated agricultural actions forced farmers away from their evolved / cultural practices and caused food production collapse). Systems like this are more complex than the foolish give them credit for being!
- nostromo 6y ago
  Mao's Four Pests Campaign was particularly disastrous and ended killing millions in famine. He decided that sparrows, which ate some fruits and seeds, should be destroyed. He didn't realize that they also eat locust larva and other pests, which exploded in population without sparrows. Those pests ended up killing massive amounts of crops after the people were ordered to eliminate all sparrows and their eggs -- it ended in widespread starvation.

logicNSci 6y ago

Specialization sure, but science is universal. Unless agriculture is built on trade secrets or art, you can contribute. This is one of my criticisms of Medical. It's not a science or the barrier to entry would be significantly lower, and as a result cost would be lower. Degrees are good, but not necessary if you can do math and get experience.

neffy 6y ago
The difficulty with medicine lies in attempting to control the death count involved in gaining the experience. Some supervision required.
Skunkleton 6y ago
There are lots of not-fully-understood processes in the world that only work because we lucked into some way of doing them. If you come at these problems with a scientific mindset but with no real experience, you are going to have a bad time.
nradov 6y ago
There is a lot more to medicine than just math and science. That is not a sound basis for criticizing the field. You'll have to do better than that.
- logicNSci 6y ago
  >There is a lot more to medicine than just math and science This is the problem.
  - nradov 6y ago
    That is not a problem. It's simply a fact that you'll have to accept.
mespe 6y ago
So, in my grad program in ag, we had a Bay-area ML startup come in to give a seminar on how they were revolutionizing agriculture. The presented their findings on how to increase yields (which they claimed could only be understood from their algorithm). The problem they were diving into was well understood, and has been researched to death for the last 100+ years. And they had the relationship backwards, not understanding their "input" to increase yields was actually a response to low yields. They were the opposite of helpful, but rather a waste of our time. As with anything, it helps to know the current state of knowledge before you jump into contribute. An understanding of math doesn't get you there.