[pixl97]

And pretty much all those jobs you're talking about are gone or low paying. Farmers aren't calculating how many pounds of barley per acre they need. They are operating computer controlled heavy equipment that does a huge amount of the calculations for them because someone thousands of miles away wrote magicial electric symbols in sand. The world is a vastly more complicated place now.

[defrost]

Wow.

Someone doesn't spend time in rural areas.

Where I live it's almost all third generation "family farms", those that are still here after others have left.

The farms are bigger but they're still at core family farms and businesses with capital costs in the millions to tens of millions, run and worked by people that farm and almost all whom have other jobs and|or businesses in parallel.

One typical neighbour is planting out several hundred acres, has a side supply business with the grain coop to site several five story concrete grain silos, owns and runs four or five local school buses (and employs drivers) with a partnership in a bee hive placement business (for honey but mainly for pollination in the district).

Between them they all have a basic grasp of (with different members specialising) building, radio equipment, GPS equipment and data managment, double entry bookkeeping and employee paperwork for a million+ per annum turn over, mechanics for cars, tractors, bob cats, etc, agonomy, animal health, first aid, welding, carpentry, . . .

Hmm, while I think of it the same family has the local volunteer fire chief (another part time job) who handles bush fire preparedness in the area, fire breaks etc.

There's no reliance on "magical someones" thousands of miles away - those services are used, sure - but they're not counted on to be always available or there when needed - farming would just grind to halt with that level of unquestioning dependance.

[pixl97]

>Someone doesn't spend time in rural areas.

Pretty poor assumption being that I come from a family of midwestern farmers that have been integrating high technology into their operations for decades.

>There's no reliance on "magical someones" thousands of miles away

You just listed out a huge number of things before that where they do have said reliance. Those bobcats/cars/tractors are not made in their neighborhood. Instead there is a vast network that supplies these objects to them at a national and worldwide level. If the fertilizer doesn't show up in spring, yields plummet. If the fuel trucks supplying petro stop farming in the mid-west stops. We aren't running steam engines that can be fed off of locally sourced wood (ok, maybe the Amish still are).

You live in a global economy that farming depends on. This entire rugged individualism works ok with short term problems, and falls apart as long term problems build up.

[JumpCrisscross]

> operating computer controlled heavy equipment that does a huge amount of the calculations for them

They're also measuring soil nutrient and nitrogen content, integrating global price signals into their sourcing and supply chain, and paying attention to the genetic characteristics of their cultivars. I'd wager American farmers, today, are vastly more knowledgeable about their craft, at a fundamental level, than farmers in the 1930s.