3 ms·

Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? I’ve always though of them as business owners with special skills in growing things, auto mechanics, and logistic

Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? I’ve always though of them as business owners with special skills in growing things, auto mechanics, and logistics.

mcmcmc 2y ago
People who’ve never lived in or around rural communities tend to stereotype those populations as country bumpkins. Newsmedia doesn’t help.
serf 2y ago
>Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? it's not a hard guess even if you don't share the opinion ; nearly every movie where 'farmer' is a plot point demonstrates a rural-living poorly educated family living in dust-bowl conditions and barely scraping enough resource by to feed the animals. grapes of wrath, wizard of oz, of mice and men, o brother where art thou, ballad of buster scruggs -- yes it's a stereotype , but it's a common one in movies and literature.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Maybe I haven't noticed this since I got inoculated against this notion by the reality of farmers early on. It still seems surprising to me that this idea can survive more than five seconds of thought. Farmers own tracts of land, lots of equipment, and have to navigate the market for their product, financing, capital allocation, weather patterns, all sorts of random events. They frequently have dozens of employees, and constantly have to negotiate with those, and with customers, and with vendors. All of this is in addition to the actual growing of crops. It seems like the most natural thing in the world that this type of person won't take kindly to being dictated to by John Deere (doesn't mean it doesn't happen anyway) and would try their hand at a bit of hacking if needs must.
AyyEye 2y ago
The mass media likes to portray farmers as straw-chewing hicks. It's the farmer stereotype. I even saw a conversation on here a few months back where someone on here not-so-nicely corrected a user that the big industrial farmers are smart but the rest of them are backwoods hicks that barely know what electricity is.
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
  I saw a comment recently on HN about how farmers exemplified unsophisticated investors who would never be able to understand complicated financial instruments. I pointed out that futures trading was literally invented by farmers.
t-3 2y ago
It's endemic to urban areas of the US, where "rural" has the connotation of ignorant, backwards, stupid, inbred, etc., and "farmer" is the epitome of rural. Bog-standard xenophobia and classism.
- FredPret 2y ago
  It’s an interesting form of classism because I’d bet the average farmer is vastly better off than the average cubicle slave, in addition to being masters of their domain.
freedomben 2y ago
> Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? It would probably be easier to describe where one would not get this stereotype. Pretty much every city person (which as many sibling comments have pointed out, control essentially all media and pop culture) holds and perpetuates that stereotype. Pretty much only people who are or know farmers know the reality behind it. But I do think it's important to point out that farmers are a very diverse group, just like many other professions. There are geniuses and there are morons. You can't take a sample size of n <= 5 and extrapolate characteristics of millions of people.

Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? I’ve always though of them as business owners with special skills in growing things, auto mechanics, and logistics.

mcmcmc 2y ago

People who’ve never lived in or around rural communities tend to stereotype those populations as country bumpkins. Newsmedia doesn’t help.

serf 2y ago

>Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? it's not a hard guess even if you don't share the opinion ; nearly every movie where 'farmer' is a plot point demonstrates a rural-living poorly educated family living in dust-bowl conditions and barely scraping enough resource by to feed the animals. grapes of wrath, wizard of oz, of mice and men, o brother where art thou, ballad of buster scruggs -- yes it's a stereotype , but it's a common one in movies and literature.

FredPret 2y ago
Maybe I haven't noticed this since I got inoculated against this notion by the reality of farmers early on. It still seems surprising to me that this idea can survive more than five seconds of thought. Farmers own tracts of land, lots of equipment, and have to navigate the market for their product, financing, capital allocation, weather patterns, all sorts of random events. They frequently have dozens of employees, and constantly have to negotiate with those, and with customers, and with vendors. All of this is in addition to the actual growing of crops. It seems like the most natural thing in the world that this type of person won't take kindly to being dictated to by John Deere (doesn't mean it doesn't happen anyway) and would try their hand at a bit of hacking if needs must.

AyyEye 2y ago

The mass media likes to portray farmers as straw-chewing hicks. It's the farmer stereotype. I even saw a conversation on here a few months back where someone on here not-so-nicely corrected a user that the big industrial farmers are smart but the rest of them are backwoods hicks that barely know what electricity is.

dreamcompiler 2y ago
I saw a comment recently on HN about how farmers exemplified unsophisticated investors who would never be able to understand complicated financial instruments. I pointed out that futures trading was literally invented by farmers.

t-3 2y ago

It's endemic to urban areas of the US, where "rural" has the connotation of ignorant, backwards, stupid, inbred, etc., and "farmer" is the epitome of rural. Bog-standard xenophobia and classism.

FredPret 2y ago
It’s an interesting form of classism because I’d bet the average farmer is vastly better off than the average cubicle slave, in addition to being masters of their domain.

freedomben 2y ago

> Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? It would probably be easier to describe where one would not get this stereotype. Pretty much every city person (which as many sibling comments have pointed out, control essentially all media and pop culture) holds and perpetuates that stereotype. Pretty much only people who are or know farmers know the reality behind it. But I do think it's important to point out that farmers are a very diverse group, just like many other professions. There are geniuses and there are morons. You can't take a sample size of n <= 5 and extrapolate characteristics of millions of people.