An off the wall question for our large farmers…
If you are using “smart farming” techniques where fertilizer, and density of crop and all kinds of other micro-factors are being calculated and then applied to fields, etc using GPS and satellite data and moisture data, etc…. I don’t know all the factors. But From what I can gather, it is both very data driven and very effective at raising yields and minimizing overuse of everything from fertilizer to pesticides…
So who owns the data for your farm? Do you? Is all the high-tech data yours and kept on servers or part of your own property records? Is it the property of the data companies or GPS companies… or fertilizer makers or Tractor companies? Does it live in their HQ? Or your farm.
I am curious because it seems to me that while self-driving cars are amusing and keep running down pedestrians and nuns… self-operating grain planting and harvesting would be rather simple. And for 20 years, the data making it possible has been gathered and stored.
Is the data like the software in some new tractors… “sorry, you bought a tractor, we own the control software and all the components that make it run.” I think there is a lawsuit on that. Is farm data owned by the farm and farmer? Or by Google and Microsoft and John Deere?
One argument against “elites” taking over farms is “who will run them?” Well in 1938, John Steinbeck showed how they got run post Mule… in his chapter about the “Cats.” Does history repeat when the Deere’s become self-driving? The Grapes of Wrath remains my favorite book, BTW. Everyone here should read it. Again.
Anyway, high tech farming has massively changed the productivity game. But could also have the effect of being the seeds of destruction for humans in farming. At a large scale anyway. The “they need us” argument is great until machinists get replaced by CNC, auto assemblers are replaced with robot arms, waiters are replaced by Kiosks… and pilots get replaced by drones. It’s not coming. It’s been here for 45 years.
It also begs the question… what can anyone do about it? Self-sufficiency is small scale and labor intensive. Big farms are equipment and, therefore, cash intensive. Call in the loans or have John Deere or Google “embargo” your farm data and crashing yields (aka profits and ability to service loans) and it creates problems as bad as Steinbeck documented… though admittedly, there are fewer families for the banks to care about now.
So what to do? Save your own data? Can you get access to it and dump it? Or save it locally? Does it even matter?
Curious because this obviously is a much more critical topic than looted Nordstrom’s. Those are distractions. This stuff is truly existential level discussion material. Largely because (and I’ve been saying this 30 years) the vaunted information economy or entertainment business or service economy is bullshit. It’s a fallacy. It’s two tribes on an island making money by doing each other’s laundry. It doesn’t work.
The only economic basis is turning raw materials and making finished products. Nothing is more basic to that than “dirt professions.” Mining and agriculture (food, lumber, fish) being the greatest value add professions and the foundation of any economy. You can’t outsource it and think trading paper or making movies will replace it.
If large scale agriculture can be taken over, it can be used to wipe out much of the human race in months. And I have heard that is a goal of some of the more radical “Gaia” worshippers.
Enough doom for Thanksgiving. But remember where everything on your table came from. “Thank you for your service” should be for farmers, too.
Sirhr