11 ms·

My Experience as a Rice Farmer

358 points by surprisetalk 7mo ago

statedin 7mo ago
You are a absolutely right the coming generation would have no idea about the carming, or wouldnlack to see the real process
anonymous908213 7mo ago
This was mostly a nice read, I do enjoy these kinds of slice-of-life blogs. I think it might have been a bit better without making claims about the economic future and history of rice farming or whatever, if the author doesn't even speak the language it's unlikely they have any real insight to offer and whatever shallow information they got off a random Youtube video is liable to be spreading misinformation that misleads uninformed readers than being actually informative. Farming a rice field does not a rice economist make. There is one particularly funny point I'd quibble on: > This was part of a system to discourage communism initially by encouraging ownership of business and preventing absentee landlords accumulating large tracts of land where people who work the fields would be forced into renting. I'm dubious about the credibility of this assertion, but it is amusing to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature, in the true definition of the economic system (ownership of the means of production, ie. you own your own labour rather than renting it out). I am, of course, nitpicking. It's rather easier for me to write comments complaining about things than praising them at length, but I was entertained by the view into the author's experiences and anecdotes.
- huijzer 7mo ago
  > to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength The point, as I see it, being that politicians like to make contradicting statements. Good for sales you could say. It is possible to cut through such lies by using logic, good on you for doing that. Unfortunately, many people take such statements as true and mostly get confused by it.
  - ahartmetz 7mo ago
    That doesn't seem strange to me at all. You give the people some of the things that they want from communism so that they will be content without communism. It's exactly what Bismarck did in Germany around 1900 (unemployment benefits, retirement funds and health insurance) and it was widely considered a success. Perhaps that was even an inspiration for Japan
- alech 7mo ago
  One thing that’s worth noting though is that Japan is known for having a large degree of small business ownership, and it’s also a pretty well documented effect that high rates of small business ownership = high rates of support for capitalism, because small business owners themselves get a taste of capitalism and see it’s benefits.
  - baudmusic 7mo ago
    [flagged]
  - ForHackernews 7mo ago
    It's true, every small business owner enjoys larping as a capitalist until it comes time to declare bankruptcy https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-small-businesses https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistan...
- CobrastanJorji 7mo ago
  You have to remember that in 1950, the US had a tremendous influence in Japan, to put it mildly, and also in 1950, the US was rabidly, performatively anti-communist. When McCarthyism was getting started stateside, we were also carrying out a "Red Purge" in Japan. Anyway, yeah, in this context, Japan passed the Agricultural Land Act of 1952, which was intended to turn land owned by a few rich landlords into small, independently owned private farms. That may sound like the opposite of capitalism, and it is, but as I understand it, the idea was to turn what were basically serfs into a proper middle class, by redistributing the wealth and means of production directly down to them, which would then prevent communism from being as appealing. I don't know about the logic, but I guess it worked, since Japan isn't communist?
  - ForOldHack 7mo ago
    Your choice of adjectives "rabidly" particularly underscores the times.
- fer 7mo ago
  How is that communistic? The reasoning behind Gentan was that a landless peasantry was more likely to revolt. It's not dissimilar to pre-1929 kulaks, though the kulaks were encouraged/enabled to become a relatively wealthy/middle class peasantry who employed people and were directly involved in the production without owning large swathes of land, acting as a kind of a social dampener against a revolution. Unsurprisingly the Soviet Union killed the kulak model and moved to collective farming[0], which was arguably actually communistic. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization
  - kubanczyk 7mo ago
    > The reasoning behind Gentan was that a landless peasantry was more likely to revolt. So, it was an anti-revolutionary policy. Which at that time of history worked as well as an anti-communist policy. > Unsurprisingly the Soviet Union killed the kulak model and moved to collective farming[0], which was arguably actually communistic. Soviet Union, whatever it had preached, implemented state capitalism - concentration of the means of production under a single owner. It's important for me to use words precisely. If somebody implies, for example, that capitalism is the opposite of communism, that's just snatching the words and waving them like banners.
    - fer 7mo ago
      >Soviet Union, whatever it had preached, implemented state capitalism - concentration of the means of production under a single owner. Lenin preached for state capitalism as a transitory state towards socialism. It's an integral part of the communist ideas, part of the direction even if not part of the ideal final state.
      - kubanczyk 7mo ago
        Sure. Historically, at times people had free trade. At times we had no monopolies at all. At times there were really few laws. We had democracy and free speech and more. Various components of "The West" had been tried before. All these did not compare with the sheer effect of capitalism: let's concentrate the production, let's scale it so big that every worker will become a hyper-narrow specialist. You bet it's unsexy take today, but it was universally understood in Lenin's times that it's a path not possible/feasible to withdraw from. That's the one magic ingredient that seems absolutely required.
- stereolambda 7mo ago
  > I'm dubious about the credibility of this assertion, but it is amusing to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature, in the true definition of the economic system (ownership of the means of production, ie. you own your own labour rather than renting it out). You are meant to "own the means of production" not in an actual, but more ideal sense. Owning a farm or workshop to the exclusion of other people makes you petit bourgeois and this is bad. Communism promotes collective farms. AFAIK Poland was the only European Eastern Bloc country to tolerate small private farms, as a concession to obstinate peasants after the death of Stalin. Promoting small individual farms is a more Georgist, populist capitalist or possibly strictly conservative policy. Not speaking to its economic sense though.
- numpad0 7mo ago
  The non-oral version of the explanation author received is likely 農地解放, a postwar US/Allied military led land reform. The core idea of it, I think, is that those landlords must have been the mainsails of prewar Japanese military dictatorship regime and its expansionism under the strong leadership of its emperor, and breaking up land ownership will make it complicated for Japan to re-consolidate power and/or to somehow become closer to the Soviets. I guess it did serve its core purpose of keeping China/Russia at bay, considering Japan has been extraordinary antagonistic to neighboring, and/or openly communist and/or totalitarian regimes, despite running on a rather ethnocentric communism-from-first-principle political system... 1: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BE%B2%E5%9C%B0%E6%94%B9%E9%9D%A9 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BE%B2%E5%9C%B0%E6%94%B9%E9...
- hagbard_c 7mo ago
  [dead]
- adrian_b 7mo ago
  The communist policy everywhere was to rob the small farmers and small business owners of everything they owned and force them to become quasi-serfs. The socialist/communist economy is the final extreme stage of monopolistic capitalism, towards which USA and other Western countries have been continuously evolving during the last quarter of century. The economy of USA in 2026 is much more similar to the economy of one of the former socialist countries in 1976 than it resembles the economy of USA in 1976. Small farmers and businessmen were the main enemies of communism, everywhere. So what Japan enacted was indeed a good anti-communist policy. Fighting against big companies and supporting small businesses is the opposite of communist policies. There were a lot of great differences between true communism and what the communists themselves claimed communism to be. There were also a lot of great differences between true communism and what communism has been claimed to be in USA. Source: I have grown up in a country occupied by communist invaders, so I know what true communism is.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- Pay08 7mo ago
  This mostly seems like an anti-manorialism idea, which falls under the umbrella of every modern economic system.
aurareturn 7mo ago
As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city. Some things I remember: * Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields * Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields * Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest * The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again and it's very comforting. Now I work in high tech, working on AI, and the fancy stuff. There is just something about rice fields that I love - maybe just memories, childhood, smell, how serene it looks when it's full. My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable more people in cities to migrate back to rural places. When I was younger, I used envy those who grew up privileged in a big modern city. Nowadays, I absolutely am glad I grew up in a little village in a farming community and I consider myself lucky to have.
- troupo 7mo ago
  > My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable people in cities to migrate back to rural places. Why? Honest question. A kid in a town/city has access to a billion opportunities many of which exist only because there are enough people interested.
  - aurareturn 7mo ago
    Why? Honest question. I don't necessarily think everyone should move out of cities to go back to living in rural areas and villages. I want it so that living outside of the city more viable than it is today because there are very real benefits to living there. In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts everyone. You never feel lonely. Life is slower, much less stressful. I feel sorry when I see kids today depressed, lonely, and distrusts society. This just didn't happen when I was growing up in a village. There is a joke that Asian parents don't think depression exists. I think part of that mindset is rooted in how many of them grew up - depression was just not really a thing in a village. I sometimes hear of people who try to move to the country side, only to hate it and want to move back to cities. I get it. It's not for everyone. But I think it can be aided with technology such as AI+robots helping with your farms or house work, self driving cars taking your kids to school a bit far away, AI doctors who can do most of the basic healthcare work, etc. And if you can build a business with 1 or 2 people + AI, then it also makes remote work more viable. Basically, I think tech can bring a lot of the city quality of life to the country side. If kids want to move to a town/city for more opportunities or networking, they'd be free to do so when they're older. Most do. But right now, the cities seem like the only path to having a decent quality of life.
magicbuzz 7mo ago
As someone producing food, it’s pretty much a given that something in nature will seek to consume what you are producing. I was waiting for it, and in this case, wild boar.
- throwaway27448 7mo ago
  Not a problem with cassava!
TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
That suitcase of rice story though, I'm finding it problematic lol. - First of all a 95% increase in the price of rice means it less than doubled which is no big deal. - I think maybe you meant it 20x'ed ? If so I will just eat corn until it comes down (my house eats 100kg of rice in a month) - Can a suitcase of rice even get through customs?
- TheDong 7mo ago
  Indeed it's a roughly 2x increase (5kg supermarket bag from 2000 jpy to 4000). Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc.
  - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
    > Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc. There's a nasty interaction among those concerns: as the basic staple food of the diet, rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food, like meat. Which means that a spike in the price of rice is effectively targeted at people who can't afford to substitute other foods.
    - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
      Corn is still cheaper. If you're really poor in Asia you're eating corn (and complaining about it).
      - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
        If you go into a Chinese supermarket, it will quickly become apparent that the default cooking oil is corn oil. I find this an interesting contrast with the United States, where the default cooking oil is Canola oil (if you're a person looking to cook your own food; this is the sense in which the Chinese default is corn oil) or soybean oil (if you're a company looking to sell packaged food in grocery stores). As far as I'm aware, traditional China would have had sesame oil and maybe soybean oil, and certainly not corn oil. The advantage of corn oil must be the price. But if corn oil is so cheap, why does the cheapest oil available in the US seem to be soybean oil?
TrackerFF 7mo ago
It is probably a nice experience to have, but imagine your body after doing this for 50-60 years. You're one serious back injury away from being unemployed.
- esseph 7mo ago
  Much like carpentry, or electrical work, or concrete, or just about any of the trades. Any labor throughout human history.
  - knollimar 7mo ago
    If ypu do those for 15 years you are likely in management
    - emptyfile 7mo ago
      Maybe in hacker news reality, not in the real world.
      - esseph 7mo ago
        Correct. Dozens or hundreds of workers for every manager or foreman. There's also a lot of owner/operator one-man shops.
        knollimar 7mo ago
        Consider the turnover rate as an geometric series. Also 1 foreman in the electrical field runs effectively 50 guys max if good, and smaller sites might be 10 men to a foreman. I currently have 3 foreman running 5 to 6 guys each at my current company (2 close sites of 3)
        esseph 7mo ago
        50:1 10:1 Big range, but still a lot of workers for every foreman. (Father in law did 35yr in carpentry and teaching job corps)
elwray 7mo ago
I and my wife live in the city for work. While most people flock to the city and settle there as an upgraded life, we always felt empty here. Our dream is to buy a piece of land at our village and come back to our roots. I dont enjoy farming that much but my wife does. I however like the bliss of living close to nature. There is a river that flows nearby and taking a dip in that fills me with so much joy that I could never find anywhere in the city.
metalman 7mo ago
I was prepared to be dissapointed, but I am not. Honest, simple, carrys that sense of work is good and doing what needs to be done is enough and that you are just another critter.
firekey_browser 7mo ago
[dead]
aledevv 7mo ago
> Doing a day of manual labour, chatting shit, then going for the onsen and some BBQ and beers is far better than grinding away at some enterprise SaaS that will probably disappear in a few years. I particularly agree with this statement. I don't know why manual work has been so denigrated over the last century. We believed that office labor was more important and healthier than manual labor. I don't think so. As a developer, sitting all day typing in a stuffy office, without natural light, without sun, without air, is certainly no healthier than being outdoors, connecting with nature and other people. We come from nature and are made to be active, outdoors, and in the sunlight. Today, with AI, many white-collar jobs are being called into question, and perhaps we can go back to loving certain traditional jobs.
- sdevonoes 7mo ago
  I’d love to do manual labor as long as: I have a decent house, decent health insurance, can afford decent food/stuff, can afford taking sabbaticals, can afford getting sick and not losing my income, can afford decent education for kids, etc. Unfortunately, many of us are chained to the modern way of life.
  - aledevv 7mo ago
    @sdevonoes What do you do for work? ps: Unfortunately I agree with you.
  - teruakohatu 7mo ago
    Don’t forget doing only enough manual labour not to get hurt, killed or develop a chronic condition. You can make a lot of money doing many skilled manual jobs in my country. Trades are highly paid and there is not enough supply. Better money than software development. They often wreck their backs, or develop other chronic conditions. The successful ones stop doing manual work by the time they are in their 40s and move to running their own businesses employing 20 year olds. A friend of mine just lost a family member a few weeks ago. He slipped on a roof.
    - aledevv 7mo ago
black3r 7mo ago
I hear sentiments about farming from lots of burnout software developers. I always wonder what made them become developers at all. Cause my primary motivation for selecting a job was that I explicitly didn't want to ever work manually, I knew that since early childhood and it still didn't change even after 2 burnouts. My secondary motivation was that I liked working with machinery/computers. Also when I started coding, it immediately felt like my passion. And the thing I love most about coding is that mostly all changes I make have instantly visible results. I couldn't imagine working a job where I had to plant a seed and then wait a week to see if it sprouts. Also what I love about development is that with modern Docker/Kubernetes setups you can make the environment where your code runs pretty predictable. And with proper backups configured and backup restore testing you aren't really worried about losing the stuff you worked on for months. Meanwhile while farming you can't predict how much sun is gonna shine or how much rain you're gonna get. And you can't prepare for natural disasters which can come anytime and ruin your crops. So I wonder if it's all just people who never loved software engineering and just went into it for money, and now that they have money after years of working they start looking for their true passion.
- rzkyif 7mo ago
  I'd say it might be due to external factors such as a bad working environment Someone who originally has coding as their passion, for example, might eventually come to dislike it due to overwork. And in doing so they overcompensate by imagining that the total opposite of office work, e.g. farming, would be a better way of life, even though it may not necessarily be true That said, I think something like a week long course of farming targeted towards white collar workers, with all of the "fun and refreshing" parts but only educational exposure to the painful parts would be a great business idea (or maybe something like that already exists somewhere)
- SenHeng 7mo ago
  Agree. My neighbour is too old to farm and his descendants aren't interested. He has offered to let me use his land for free but I just can’t get interested. Even just taking care of a few potted plants is too much for me.
- foobarian 7mo ago
RataNova 7mo ago
What stood out to me wasn't just the farming process (which is fascinating in itself), but how much of it sits at the intersection of tradition, family and constraints that don't quite make economic sense anymore
yamamura_thinks 7mo ago
Japanese agriculture is in a critical situation. However, many urban workers, weary of capitalist competition, dream of a semi-agricultural life in the countryside.
tastyfreeze 7mo ago
I have tried for a few years to grow rice a little farther north than it likes. When learning about rice farming I was surprised by Japanese farming machines. In the US our farm machines are built for enormous pieces of land and are ungodly expensive. Japanese machines are designed for small farms and to be affordable. Small machines are something that are seemingly missing from the US farm equipment market.
brainless 7mo ago
This is so cool. I have been in software for about 18 years but in the last few years I grew tired of the city life. My health was already affected by sedentary lifestyle - high blood glucose for many years. I have been living in villages for about 5 years. I started a pig farm a month back. I have 16 piglets now. I still write software on a daily basis, a mix of client projects and own products. The pig farm needs about 2 hours of cleaning each day. I take care of cleaning. My business partner takes care of feeding. I plan to grow the pig farm to a capacity of 100 pigs. It is a profitable business with roughly 30% return every 6-7 months. We give the pigs a lot more space and care than I have ever seen in any of those factory-style livestock business videos. With a 100 pigs, I will perhaps spend 5 hours a day in cleaning work - with more tools and employing a couple local folks. Feel free to check out (links in my bio) or reach out if anyone wants to come and try this out in our little village in north eastern India. The village has large farms, growing all sorts of things.
- big_toast 7mo ago
  This is feels like life imitates art (the plot Stardew Valley). I hope you and your farm find great success!
j2kun 7mo ago
As an aside, participating in April Cools Club for the last 5 years has been very fun and invigorating as a writer. https://www.aprilcools.club/ https://www.aprilcools.club/
vismit2000 7mo ago
Looking at my future given this wave of AI!
khernandezrt 7mo ago
Ah so this is what you do after you work as a senior dev for 22 years.
handzhiev 7mo ago
I love when between the AI updates and Rust vs C++ wars, HN suddenly promotes a post about rice farming in Japan <3
- Pay08 7mo ago
  I wish we got more Rust vs C++, instead of the unending AI flood.

358 points by surprisetalk 7mo ago

You are a absolutely right the coming generation would have no idea about the carming, or wouldnlack to see the real process

anonymous908213 7mo ago

This was mostly a nice read, I do enjoy these kinds of slice-of-life blogs. I think it might have been a bit better without making claims about the economic future and history of rice farming or whatever, if the author doesn't even speak the language it's unlikely they have any real insight to offer and whatever shallow information they got off a random Youtube video is liable to be spreading misinformation that misleads uninformed readers than being actually informative. Farming a rice field does not a rice economist make. There is one particularly funny point I'd quibble on: > This was part of a system to discourage communism initially by encouraging ownership of business and preventing absentee landlords accumulating large tracts of land where people who work the fields would be forced into renting. I'm dubious about the credibility of this assertion, but it is amusing to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature, in the true definition of the economic system (ownership of the means of production, ie. you own your own labour rather than renting it out). I am, of course, nitpicking. It's rather easier for me to write comments complaining about things than praising them at length, but I was entertained by the view into the author's experiences and anecdotes.

huijzer 7mo ago
> to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength The point, as I see it, being that politicians like to make contradicting statements. Good for sales you could say. It is possible to cut through such lies by using logic, good on you for doing that. Unfortunately, many people take such statements as true and mostly get confused by it.
- ahartmetz 7mo ago
  That doesn't seem strange to me at all. You give the people some of the things that they want from communism so that they will be content without communism. It's exactly what Bismarck did in Germany around 1900 (unemployment benefits, retirement funds and health insurance) and it was widely considered a success. Perhaps that was even an inspiration for Japan
alech 7mo ago
One thing that’s worth noting though is that Japan is known for having a large degree of small business ownership, and it’s also a pretty well documented effect that high rates of small business ownership = high rates of support for capitalism, because small business owners themselves get a taste of capitalism and see it’s benefits.
- baudmusic 7mo ago
  [flagged]
- ForHackernews 7mo ago
  It's true, every small business owner enjoys larping as a capitalist until it comes time to declare bankruptcy https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-small-businesses https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistan...
CobrastanJorji 7mo ago
You have to remember that in 1950, the US had a tremendous influence in Japan, to put it mildly, and also in 1950, the US was rabidly, performatively anti-communist. When McCarthyism was getting started stateside, we were also carrying out a "Red Purge" in Japan. Anyway, yeah, in this context, Japan passed the Agricultural Land Act of 1952, which was intended to turn land owned by a few rich landlords into small, independently owned private farms. That may sound like the opposite of capitalism, and it is, but as I understand it, the idea was to turn what were basically serfs into a proper middle class, by redistributing the wealth and means of production directly down to them, which would then prevent communism from being as appealing. I don't know about the logic, but I guess it worked, since Japan isn't communist?
- ForOldHack 7mo ago
  Your choice of adjectives "rabidly" particularly underscores the times.
fer 7mo ago
How is that communistic? The reasoning behind Gentan was that a landless peasantry was more likely to revolt. It's not dissimilar to pre-1929 kulaks, though the kulaks were encouraged/enabled to become a relatively wealthy/middle class peasantry who employed people and were directly involved in the production without owning large swathes of land, acting as a kind of a social dampener against a revolution. Unsurprisingly the Soviet Union killed the kulak model and moved to collective farming[0], which was arguably actually communistic. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization
- kubanczyk 7mo ago
  > The reasoning behind Gentan was that a landless peasantry was more likely to revolt. So, it was an anti-revolutionary policy. Which at that time of history worked as well as an anti-communist policy. > Unsurprisingly the Soviet Union killed the kulak model and moved to collective farming[0], which was arguably actually communistic. Soviet Union, whatever it had preached, implemented state capitalism - concentration of the means of production under a single owner. It's important for me to use words precisely. If somebody implies, for example, that capitalism is the opposite of communism, that's just snatching the words and waving them like banners.
  - fer 7mo ago
    >Soviet Union, whatever it had preached, implemented state capitalism - concentration of the means of production under a single owner. Lenin preached for state capitalism as a transitory state towards socialism. It's an integral part of the communist ideas, part of the direction even if not part of the ideal final state.
    - kubanczyk 7mo ago
      Sure. Historically, at times people had free trade. At times we had no monopolies at all. At times there were really few laws. We had democracy and free speech and more. Various components of "The West" had been tried before. All these did not compare with the sheer effect of capitalism: let's concentrate the production, let's scale it so big that every worker will become a hyper-narrow specialist. You bet it's unsexy take today, but it was universally understood in Lenin's times that it's a path not possible/feasible to withdraw from. That's the one magic ingredient that seems absolutely required.
stereolambda 7mo ago
> I'm dubious about the credibility of this assertion, but it is amusing to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature, in the true definition of the economic system (ownership of the means of production, ie. you own your own labour rather than renting it out). You are meant to "own the means of production" not in an actual, but more ideal sense. Owning a farm or workshop to the exclusion of other people makes you petit bourgeois and this is bad. Communism promotes collective farms. AFAIK Poland was the only European Eastern Bloc country to tolerate small private farms, as a concession to obstinate peasants after the death of Stalin. Promoting small individual farms is a more Georgist, populist capitalist or possibly strictly conservative policy. Not speaking to its economic sense though.
numpad0 7mo ago
The non-oral version of the explanation author received is likely 農地解放, a postwar US/Allied military led land reform. The core idea of it, I think, is that those landlords must have been the mainsails of prewar Japanese military dictatorship regime and its expansionism under the strong leadership of its emperor, and breaking up land ownership will make it complicated for Japan to re-consolidate power and/or to somehow become closer to the Soviets. I guess it did serve its core purpose of keeping China/Russia at bay, considering Japan has been extraordinary antagonistic to neighboring, and/or openly communist and/or totalitarian regimes, despite running on a rather ethnocentric communism-from-first-principle political system... 1: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BE%B2%E5%9C%B0%E6%94%B9%E9%9D%A9 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BE%B2%E5%9C%B0%E6%94%B9%E9...
hagbard_c 7mo ago
[dead]
adrian_b 7mo ago
The communist policy everywhere was to rob the small farmers and small business owners of everything they owned and force them to become quasi-serfs. The socialist/communist economy is the final extreme stage of monopolistic capitalism, towards which USA and other Western countries have been continuously evolving during the last quarter of century. The economy of USA in 2026 is much more similar to the economy of one of the former socialist countries in 1976 than it resembles the economy of USA in 1976. Small farmers and businessmen were the main enemies of communism, everywhere. So what Japan enacted was indeed a good anti-communist policy. Fighting against big companies and supporting small businesses is the opposite of communist policies. There were a lot of great differences between true communism and what the communists themselves claimed communism to be. There were also a lot of great differences between true communism and what communism has been claimed to be in USA. Source: I have grown up in a country occupied by communist invaders, so I know what true communism is.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
Pay08 7mo ago
This mostly seems like an anti-manorialism idea, which falls under the umbrella of every modern economic system.

aurareturn 7mo ago

As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city. Some things I remember: * Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields * Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields * Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest * The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again and it's very comforting. Now I work in high tech, working on AI, and the fancy stuff. There is just something about rice fields that I love - maybe just memories, childhood, smell, how serene it looks when it's full. My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable more people in cities to migrate back to rural places. When I was younger, I used envy those who grew up privileged in a big modern city. Nowadays, I absolutely am glad I grew up in a little village in a farming community and I consider myself lucky to have.

troupo 7mo ago
> My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable people in cities to migrate back to rural places. Why? Honest question. A kid in a town/city has access to a billion opportunities many of which exist only because there are enough people interested.
- aurareturn 7mo ago
  Why? Honest question. I don't necessarily think everyone should move out of cities to go back to living in rural areas and villages. I want it so that living outside of the city more viable than it is today because there are very real benefits to living there. In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts everyone. You never feel lonely. Life is slower, much less stressful. I feel sorry when I see kids today depressed, lonely, and distrusts society. This just didn't happen when I was growing up in a village. There is a joke that Asian parents don't think depression exists. I think part of that mindset is rooted in how many of them grew up - depression was just not really a thing in a village. I sometimes hear of people who try to move to the country side, only to hate it and want to move back to cities. I get it. It's not for everyone. But I think it can be aided with technology such as AI+robots helping with your farms or house work, self driving cars taking your kids to school a bit far away, AI doctors who can do most of the basic healthcare work, etc. And if you can build a business with 1 or 2 people + AI, then it also makes remote work more viable. Basically, I think tech can bring a lot of the city quality of life to the country side. If kids want to move to a town/city for more opportunities or networking, they'd be free to do so when they're older. Most do. But right now, the cities seem like the only path to having a decent quality of life.

magicbuzz 7mo ago

As someone producing food, it’s pretty much a given that something in nature will seek to consume what you are producing. I was waiting for it, and in this case, wild boar.

throwaway27448 7mo ago
Not a problem with cassava!

TurdF3rguson 7mo ago

That suitcase of rice story though, I'm finding it problematic lol. - First of all a 95% increase in the price of rice means it less than doubled which is no big deal. - I think maybe you meant it 20x'ed ? If so I will just eat corn until it comes down (my house eats 100kg of rice in a month) - Can a suitcase of rice even get through customs?

TheDong 7mo ago
Indeed it's a roughly 2x increase (5kg supermarket bag from 2000 jpy to 4000). Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc.
- thaumasiotes 7mo ago
  > Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc. There's a nasty interaction among those concerns: as the basic staple food of the diet, rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food, like meat. Which means that a spike in the price of rice is effectively targeted at people who can't afford to substitute other foods.
  - TurdF3rguson 7mo ago
    Corn is still cheaper. If you're really poor in Asia you're eating corn (and complaining about it).
    - thaumasiotes 7mo ago
      If you go into a Chinese supermarket, it will quickly become apparent that the default cooking oil is corn oil. I find this an interesting contrast with the United States, where the default cooking oil is Canola oil (if you're a person looking to cook your own food; this is the sense in which the Chinese default is corn oil) or soybean oil (if you're a company looking to sell packaged food in grocery stores). As far as I'm aware, traditional China would have had sesame oil and maybe soybean oil, and certainly not corn oil. The advantage of corn oil must be the price. But if corn oil is so cheap, why does the cheapest oil available in the US seem to be soybean oil?

TrackerFF 7mo ago

It is probably a nice experience to have, but imagine your body after doing this for 50-60 years. You're one serious back injury away from being unemployed.

esseph 7mo ago
Much like carpentry, or electrical work, or concrete, or just about any of the trades. Any labor throughout human history.
- knollimar 7mo ago
  If ypu do those for 15 years you are likely in management
  - emptyfile 7mo ago
    Maybe in hacker news reality, not in the real world.
    - esseph 7mo ago
      Correct. Dozens or hundreds of workers for every manager or foreman. There's also a lot of owner/operator one-man shops.
      - knollimar 7mo ago
        Consider the turnover rate as an geometric series. Also 1 foreman in the electrical field runs effectively 50 guys max if good, and smaller sites might be 10 men to a foreman. I currently have 3 foreman running 5 to 6 guys each at my current company (2 close sites of 3)
        esseph 7mo ago
        50:1 10:1 Big range, but still a lot of workers for every foreman. (Father in law did 35yr in carpentry and teaching job corps)

elwray 7mo ago

I and my wife live in the city for work. While most people flock to the city and settle there as an upgraded life, we always felt empty here. Our dream is to buy a piece of land at our village and come back to our roots. I dont enjoy farming that much but my wife does. I however like the bliss of living close to nature. There is a river that flows nearby and taking a dip in that fills me with so much joy that I could never find anywhere in the city.

metalman 7mo ago

I was prepared to be dissapointed, but I am not. Honest, simple, carrys that sense of work is good and doing what needs to be done is enough and that you are just another critter.

firekey_browser 7mo ago

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aledevv 7mo ago

> Doing a day of manual labour, chatting shit, then going for the onsen and some BBQ and beers is far better than grinding away at some enterprise SaaS that will probably disappear in a few years. I particularly agree with this statement. I don't know why manual work has been so denigrated over the last century. We believed that office labor was more important and healthier than manual labor. I don't think so. As a developer, sitting all day typing in a stuffy office, without natural light, without sun, without air, is certainly no healthier than being outdoors, connecting with nature and other people. We come from nature and are made to be active, outdoors, and in the sunlight. Today, with AI, many white-collar jobs are being called into question, and perhaps we can go back to loving certain traditional jobs.

sdevonoes 7mo ago
I’d love to do manual labor as long as: I have a decent house, decent health insurance, can afford decent food/stuff, can afford taking sabbaticals, can afford getting sick and not losing my income, can afford decent education for kids, etc. Unfortunately, many of us are chained to the modern way of life.
- aledevv 7mo ago
  @sdevonoes What do you do for work? ps: Unfortunately I agree with you.
- teruakohatu 7mo ago
  Don’t forget doing only enough manual labour not to get hurt, killed or develop a chronic condition. You can make a lot of money doing many skilled manual jobs in my country. Trades are highly paid and there is not enough supply. Better money than software development. They often wreck their backs, or develop other chronic conditions. The successful ones stop doing manual work by the time they are in their 40s and move to running their own businesses employing 20 year olds. A friend of mine just lost a family member a few weeks ago. He slipped on a roof.
  - aledevv 7mo ago

black3r 7mo ago

I hear sentiments about farming from lots of burnout software developers. I always wonder what made them become developers at all. Cause my primary motivation for selecting a job was that I explicitly didn't want to ever work manually, I knew that since early childhood and it still didn't change even after 2 burnouts. My secondary motivation was that I liked working with machinery/computers. Also when I started coding, it immediately felt like my passion. And the thing I love most about coding is that mostly all changes I make have instantly visible results. I couldn't imagine working a job where I had to plant a seed and then wait a week to see if it sprouts. Also what I love about development is that with modern Docker/Kubernetes setups you can make the environment where your code runs pretty predictable. And with proper backups configured and backup restore testing you aren't really worried about losing the stuff you worked on for months. Meanwhile while farming you can't predict how much sun is gonna shine or how much rain you're gonna get. And you can't prepare for natural disasters which can come anytime and ruin your crops. So I wonder if it's all just people who never loved software engineering and just went into it for money, and now that they have money after years of working they start looking for their true passion.

rzkyif 7mo ago
I'd say it might be due to external factors such as a bad working environment Someone who originally has coding as their passion, for example, might eventually come to dislike it due to overwork. And in doing so they overcompensate by imagining that the total opposite of office work, e.g. farming, would be a better way of life, even though it may not necessarily be true That said, I think something like a week long course of farming targeted towards white collar workers, with all of the "fun and refreshing" parts but only educational exposure to the painful parts would be a great business idea (or maybe something like that already exists somewhere)
SenHeng 7mo ago
Agree. My neighbour is too old to farm and his descendants aren't interested. He has offered to let me use his land for free but I just can’t get interested. Even just taking care of a few potted plants is too much for me.
foobarian 7mo ago

RataNova 7mo ago

What stood out to me wasn't just the farming process (which is fascinating in itself), but how much of it sits at the intersection of tradition, family and constraints that don't quite make economic sense anymore

yamamura_thinks 7mo ago

Japanese agriculture is in a critical situation. However, many urban workers, weary of capitalist competition, dream of a semi-agricultural life in the countryside.

tastyfreeze 7mo ago

I have tried for a few years to grow rice a little farther north than it likes. When learning about rice farming I was surprised by Japanese farming machines. In the US our farm machines are built for enormous pieces of land and are ungodly expensive. Japanese machines are designed for small farms and to be affordable. Small machines are something that are seemingly missing from the US farm equipment market.

brainless 7mo ago

This is so cool. I have been in software for about 18 years but in the last few years I grew tired of the city life. My health was already affected by sedentary lifestyle - high blood glucose for many years. I have been living in villages for about 5 years. I started a pig farm a month back. I have 16 piglets now. I still write software on a daily basis, a mix of client projects and own products. The pig farm needs about 2 hours of cleaning each day. I take care of cleaning. My business partner takes care of feeding. I plan to grow the pig farm to a capacity of 100 pigs. It is a profitable business with roughly 30% return every 6-7 months. We give the pigs a lot more space and care than I have ever seen in any of those factory-style livestock business videos. With a 100 pigs, I will perhaps spend 5 hours a day in cleaning work - with more tools and employing a couple local folks. Feel free to check out (links in my bio) or reach out if anyone wants to come and try this out in our little village in north eastern India. The village has large farms, growing all sorts of things.

big_toast 7mo ago
This is feels like life imitates art (the plot Stardew Valley). I hope you and your farm find great success!

j2kun 7mo ago

As an aside, participating in April Cools Club for the last 5 years has been very fun and invigorating as a writer. https://www.aprilcools.club/ https://www.aprilcools.club/

vismit2000 7mo ago

Looking at my future given this wave of AI!

khernandezrt 7mo ago

Ah so this is what you do after you work as a senior dev for 22 years.

handzhiev 7mo ago

I love when between the AI updates and Rust vs C++ wars, HN suddenly promotes a post about rice farming in Japan <3

Pay08 7mo ago
I wish we got more Rust vs C++, instead of the unending AI flood.