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It's ok though. I like these threads on HN. Hopefully helps educate people. People on HN have a lot of skills to offer agriculture they likely aren't even aware

It's ok though. I like these threads on HN. Hopefully helps educate people. People on HN have a lot of skills to offer agriculture they likely aren't even aware of. Every article/discussion helps spread the message, hopefully. ETA: Most people don't understand agriculture or where their food comes from--HN no different. Only small % of people involved in agriculture _directly_

jiveturkey42 4y ago
Alternatively, I would argue that much harm has been done to agriculture by the 'information' sector in general. Commoditizing and industrializing food production (a reduction to data and numbers) has caused most of the issues collectively known as the 'modern American diet'
- kickout 4y ago
  Kind of agree. I don't think ag was malicious in that regard. No different than any business trying to maximize profits by any* means necessary (tm). Just so happens it affects human health.
- true_religion 4y ago
  Okay, but I don't think anyone of us are part of the information sector that's commoditizing food production. OP said we are unaware of agriculture, and I mostly agree unless you're in an agrarian area or country, you simply won't learn about these things. Additionally what you're talking about sounds more like actions prompted by business 'leaders' and not IT staff making databases.
  - jiveturkey42 4y ago
    I don't blame the individual IT staff or engineers for being foot soldiers of corporate mandate. I do blame the mindset of 'every problem can be solved with enough data'
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      If you have the right data, I don't see why not?
      - onemoresoop 4y ago
        In theory yes but.. How do you know when you have the right data and how do you know you're solving the right problem and not causing others? So far confidence and hubris came with myopia.
        cinntaile 4y ago
        That's a problem you have even when not relying on "enough" right data to base your decisions off of. With data you can at least have a more scientific approach to it all. It is correct that science and data gets hijacked for political goals as well, so it's not necessarily a road to success.
      - salawat 4y ago
        What heppens when you think you have the right data but don't? How about when everyone else thinks they have the right data, but don't, you do, but can't scale because of institutional inertia and risk? Q.E.D. Farming and logistics are infuriatingly hard problems, toghtly coupled with the fundamental problems of signaling and distributed systems.
        cinntaile 4y ago
        You can't ask 2 questions and then claim it's been proven?
    - true_religion 4y ago
      It seems you have a broader compliant, so let me ask you: What's the alternative to using scientific process to solve problems? Agriculture effects the environment, uses shared resources, and is necessary for the continuation of human life. I would be really wary about going with a gut feeling to solve such a large important problem.
phil21 4y ago
So far at posting time I don't see a whole lot of signal to gain from the noise here if I were legitimately someone who had zero agriculture experience and was trying to gain understanding. This is the blind leading the blind, and if you gleaned much from the top comments you'd be worse informed than not reading this entire thread. Half of the posts are just political using couched language to pretend they aren't. Ag is definitely one of HNs blind spots, usually the topics are simply amusing (e.g. urban food production startups burning millions of VC) - but this is the first actually "substantive to humanity topic" I've read through and the results are a little scary. And heck, I'm probably contributing to this noise since I also haven't stepped foot on a farm or market garden in well over a decade.
- tagami 4y ago
  for the hardware/software interest, the signal is precision agriculture. Using sensors and data to optimize yields.
- kickout 4y ago
  Usually I shill my blog (in bio) where I _hope_ i'm sharing signal. In a weird type of way, there's little we can do immediately. Almost like a solar flare type of event. Ag and food production systems are so massively scaled, even if we WANTED to change everything for the better, it would likely take years, if not decades. Not like software where any bug can be fixed in a week or so. Human population numbers have exploded on the back of cheap, abundant food. If anything seriously disturbed that, yikes.
- jiveturkey42 4y ago
  Perhaps these issues cannot be solved from a desk and computer. HN might bristle at the idea the Farmer Joe has a more sophisticated mental model of an extremely complex and multivariate system (a field of corn or soy) which evades reduction to a dataset. The solutions I've seen on this board is typically "well let's reduce the variables and grow lettuce in warehouses!" Or trying to build a robot that can pick strawberries. Neither of these solves food scarcity issues. If people reading this wanted to pursue a meaningful solution via data, my advise is to look at the scaling of the farm-to-consumer market, and how to enable larger distributed networks of small independent farms to sell to customers. The food supply will be more resilient when farming gets smaller, simpler, and more distributed

jiveturkey42 4y ago

Alternatively, I would argue that much harm has been done to agriculture by the 'information' sector in general. Commoditizing and industrializing food production (a reduction to data and numbers) has caused most of the issues collectively known as the 'modern American diet'

kickout 4y ago
Kind of agree. I don't think ag was malicious in that regard. No different than any business trying to maximize profits by any* means necessary (tm). Just so happens it affects human health.
true_religion 4y ago
Okay, but I don't think anyone of us are part of the information sector that's commoditizing food production. OP said we are unaware of agriculture, and I mostly agree unless you're in an agrarian area or country, you simply won't learn about these things. Additionally what you're talking about sounds more like actions prompted by business 'leaders' and not IT staff making databases.
- jiveturkey42 4y ago
  I don't blame the individual IT staff or engineers for being foot soldiers of corporate mandate. I do blame the mindset of 'every problem can be solved with enough data'
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    If you have the right data, I don't see why not?
    - onemoresoop 4y ago
      In theory yes but.. How do you know when you have the right data and how do you know you're solving the right problem and not causing others? So far confidence and hubris came with myopia.
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        That's a problem you have even when not relying on "enough" right data to base your decisions off of. With data you can at least have a more scientific approach to it all. It is correct that science and data gets hijacked for political goals as well, so it's not necessarily a road to success.
    - salawat 4y ago
      What heppens when you think you have the right data but don't? How about when everyone else thinks they have the right data, but don't, you do, but can't scale because of institutional inertia and risk? Q.E.D. Farming and logistics are infuriatingly hard problems, toghtly coupled with the fundamental problems of signaling and distributed systems.
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        You can't ask 2 questions and then claim it's been proven?
  - true_religion 4y ago
    It seems you have a broader compliant, so let me ask you: What's the alternative to using scientific process to solve problems? Agriculture effects the environment, uses shared resources, and is necessary for the continuation of human life. I would be really wary about going with a gut feeling to solve such a large important problem.

phil21 4y ago

So far at posting time I don't see a whole lot of signal to gain from the noise here if I were legitimately someone who had zero agriculture experience and was trying to gain understanding. This is the blind leading the blind, and if you gleaned much from the top comments you'd be worse informed than not reading this entire thread. Half of the posts are just political using couched language to pretend they aren't. Ag is definitely one of HNs blind spots, usually the topics are simply amusing (e.g. urban food production startups burning millions of VC) - but this is the first actually "substantive to humanity topic" I've read through and the results are a little scary. And heck, I'm probably contributing to this noise since I also haven't stepped foot on a farm or market garden in well over a decade.

tagami 4y ago
for the hardware/software interest, the signal is precision agriculture. Using sensors and data to optimize yields.
kickout 4y ago
Usually I shill my blog (in bio) where I _hope_ i'm sharing signal. In a weird type of way, there's little we can do immediately. Almost like a solar flare type of event. Ag and food production systems are so massively scaled, even if we WANTED to change everything for the better, it would likely take years, if not decades. Not like software where any bug can be fixed in a week or so. Human population numbers have exploded on the back of cheap, abundant food. If anything seriously disturbed that, yikes.
jiveturkey42 4y ago
Perhaps these issues cannot be solved from a desk and computer. HN might bristle at the idea the Farmer Joe has a more sophisticated mental model of an extremely complex and multivariate system (a field of corn or soy) which evades reduction to a dataset. The solutions I've seen on this board is typically "well let's reduce the variables and grow lettuce in warehouses!" Or trying to build a robot that can pick strawberries. Neither of these solves food scarcity issues. If people reading this wanted to pursue a meaningful solution via data, my advise is to look at the scaling of the farm-to-consumer market, and how to enable larger distributed networks of small independent farms to sell to customers. The food supply will be more resilient when farming gets smaller, simpler, and more distributed