(November 13, 2021 at 1:26 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Here's an outlook for your consideration. Tell me if you think it's cynical. There's just one way to get into sustainable ag right now. It's super simple.
Inherited wealth.
Not kidding. That's it, that's all. It's a known known. Dirty little secret of the food journalism industry. plucky entreprenuers try to buck that trend and the national conversation creates a buzz about them..but then they move on to other things and don't follow up. Those guys fail. Overwhelmingly. The ones that succeed...independently wealthy very nearly to a man. The problem isn't so much to find new ways to grow, but to find ways to make money doing things we've known how to do for quite some time. Thousands of years, in many cases. The problem with respect to farms as a business is investment. You can't corner the market on unpatentable systems and methods through lawfare.
Commons production, regenerative ag, closed loops, diversified crop portfolios, site specific consideration, highly specialized labor. These aren't sci fi solutions, but they're the only game in town, in mere reality. Outside of farming by oils numbers, that is.
95% of rice farms in Arkansas are family owned and run. Precision levelled, low flood fields. Real time data on display maps. Remote irrigation control. Hi tech stuff has increased profits and made their jobs easier. Great opportunity for an instrumentation and controls engineer, but don't talk to them about kooky liberal vaccines and climate change.
