If it's impossible to change the nature of bureaucracy, than why bother at all combining two into one, other than to make that bureaucracy smaller?
Why pay farm workers overtime? Because it's the right thing to do. I've worked in Farming and I know that most farmers take advantage of their workers by working them 80 hour plus a week at times. I also know if Farmers had to pay overtime they would hire enough people to get the job done with fewer hours per employee... i.e. it's cheaper to pay two employees 40 hours straight time, than it is to pay one 80 hours plus... although to be fair there is a trade off depending upon workmen's comp, and such, for each employee...
Will farming become total or even semi-automated, probably not soon.
I've driven GPS guided farm equipment, and on every field we have to also drive manually... not all farm fields are square and flat... especially in the area where we farm in the foot hills of the mountains, or the rolling hills to the north.
Right now it's still cheaper to hire a farm laborer, than it is to overcome the technological issues automation raises. One of the big issues with technology today is that many farm workers don't have a strong grasp of English, and some can't read any language well... Even fewer understand computers...
Most people really wouldn't be happy if farms disappeared completely, and I doubt they ever will.
why bother at all combining two into one, other than to make that bureaucracy smaller?
that's it....no other reason.
think what you want about farming...wish REALLY hard..
maybe, against all odds...this ONE TIME....it'll work.
Making government smaller is always a worthy goal... maybe, against all odds...this ONE TIME....it'll work.
As to farming, I guess you'd have to be there to understand... am I saying it will never happen? No, I'm sure someday, in another place and time far, far away it just may, but I doubt either of us will live to see farming become fully automated.
I grew up in farming country and worked on them.
Have you ever chopped or tromped cotton, rouged maize or cleaned out a grain-leg?
I grew up in farming country and worked on them.
Okay, we have reached common ground... you know if we tried just a little, we may even be friends or at least friendly to each other... or at most not angry with each other.
As far as cotton? Nope... I live on a Wheat Ranch, and the only corn we grow is seed corn. Green peas are a rotational crop, and pulling plugged peas out of a pea combine is a real pain, night or day.
I have worked year round on a Wheat ranch, and done just about every job there is while working here.
But, I spent thirty years working as an auto mechanic, plenty of hard dirty work in the shop...
I graduated a couple years ago with a Bachelors degree... that was the easiest job I ever had...
So, are you going to reach out and take my hand for a hand shake, or should I just move on?
you seem defensive...no idea why.
I got some edumacation too.
a masters degree forty years ago, the prerequisite bachelors , an associate and a drawer full of technical certificates.
but we was talking automation...lemme tell you a story.
I was also a school bus driver...for about five years.
when I first started driving for the school district it had about ten 72 passenger buses.
Kress Texas...you've probably NOT heard of it...little town on the high plains. Almost everyone was a farmer. Lots of farm kids then
Five years later...not so much. For one reason or another the farms needed fewer and fewer people to work them....the number of kids going to school dropped so much that we only needed three buses and one of them was a mini van.
So...why are less people needed to farm? Will the trend continue? Are we going to pay nonexistent people? Doesn't seem like a problem to me.
Defensive, maybe, maybe not... I'm new here... and I do want to start off on the right foot here... although I can be a bit of smart aleck at times, I mean no harm...
I guess my first question about where the farm kids went would be, did the farms become industrialized and get larger?
I'm not going to say automation isn't a boon to agriculture, I've seen first hand the successive generations of equipment on the ranch I worked on. I've found old horse shoes the equipment picked up out of the fields we work.
The ranch I worked on has been family owned for four generations, and I swear they never threw anything away... we have old tracked Caterpillars from the thirties on the property, and models all the way up to today's AGCO Challengers. We have farm implements that are built with wooden frames. And, we have Air Drills that seed the field and apply fertilizer at different rates in different zones in the field... tech's great... and I'll drive with GPS every chance I get...
I just had some pea combines drive by that replaced the old combines we have... one of the newer combines will do the work of four of our old ones.
And, I've watched videos of the newest prototype tractors that have no cabs working the fields... but I have a hard time believing they'll completely replace human drivers on the ground we farm. Driving off a cliff is a real hazard we face. We drive very steep hill sides that when the people from the Mid-West come to see us, their first question is, "You guys farm that!"
Technology will catch up, but sometimes I wonder if it's cost effective to spend hundreds, and hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars designing new farm equipment that is meant to replace farm hands that earn a little over minimum wage? Is the trade off worth it, or are engineers just doing it because they can? Is it really a problem that needs fixing?
but I have a hard time believing they'll completely replace human drivers on the ground we farm
Probably not. The drivers won't be replaced. Why replace something that's obsolete?
They won't 'drive on the ground' any longer.
I've written about this before. Farming as we know it won't last much longer. It will be replaced by automated food production. At the present moment, using advanced growing techniques. Open air farms are outproduced 100 to one.
Greenhouses are just the start.
Vertical urban farms are a tiny bit more advanced.
Hydroponics, Aquaponics, are being developed now.
(don't forget sea farming)
eventually it will be possible to take the Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen (found in the air) add a few 'micro-nutrients' for taste, synthesize and 3D print our food.
OH..you say...Maybe Someday...but not very soon.
You can't imagine it..
A billion times more advanced in only Thirty years...
BUT WAIT
what about fifty years?