Ways to Bring Tech Jobs to Rural Areas

How are they “creating barrios”? By speaking their native toungue and maybe listening to Hispanic music? Would the city be happier if they all spoke English to each other and they listened to Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw?

I'm frequently surprised by how fully integrated and accepted by the community the second and subsequent generations are.

There are different levels of acceptance.

- serving people in a place of business.

- employment

- socially

- living in the same neighborhood

- going to the same church

- dating.

Statistically, most Black people live in a majority Black neighborhoods. Because of redlining, steering, economics, and just comfort.

Because we live in an overwhelmingly White area, if my (step)son is going to date anyone from school, more than likely they are going to be white. Parents haven’t had any problems with it but is that because he has an acceptable pedigree and he grew up in the burbs, doesn’t “talk Black”, and we live in “good neighborhood”? How would they feel if he were the same person, doing well in school but lived on the other side of the tracks? Also, both my wife and I know how to “code switch”.

If you are working on the same food drive or Habitat-for-Humanity house, a majority of Christians are willing to (at least temporarily) overlook the error of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

It takes an effort to just bring Christian churches of multiple races to come together. When you are constantly being brainwashed into believing that Muslims are trying to spread Sharia law and that there are already some cities in the US under Sharia law, it’s hard to shake those beliefs.

There is also a lot of hostility to technology in Ag. Even amongst the young people(and I am not young myself). I like robotics and really do believe we can check out Mars in our lifetimes. I make non PC jokes and can be embarrassing company for people who are into this with a deep abiding purpose. Maybe it’s my delusion but it’s too late for me to give that up.

I also find that the farming community is allergic to money. I don’t know why. I like money. If it’s not making money to support the business, it’s a hobby. The younger generation is always looking for all forms of justice and resisting something or other. I am an immigrant myself and I am VERY grateful to be here in the United States. And Bay Area. I love it here and can’t get myself worked up too much. Because I have seen worse. No matter how bad things gets here, it’s still better here than most other parts of the world and I appreciate that.

I only end up irritating them when I try to share my dreams and visions. I have been told that I don’t have a farmer’s work ethic because I want robots to do the work instead of ‘dirt under my nails’ or because I think food must be at least 4x more expensive given the manual work that goes into organic speciality foods. I also think standing in a farmers market and hawking tomatoes for $2/lb is an utter waste of my time. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t jump into farming and sell the house to buy a farm!! I just realized after all these years that I don’t fit in..just like I don’t fit in as the tech worker in Silicon Valley...and I am relieved. Now..I can look for something else but not before I put it to sleep after giving it a final shot for the next 12 more months.

I would be happy even if I can make a prototype or even a low hanging fruit of a white paper of a sustainable full automation of small acreages. It will be worth the 5+ years I tried farming. To me, anyways.

But if there a tech friendly ecological minded natural farming community, I might fit in! That the community you mentioned is into automation makes me want to look them up and perhaps I can hope for a west coast chapter? I appreciate your response!

Arkansas has a population density of 22 people/sq km, close to Sweden - but Arkansas is probably much less urbanized.

Blanket statement that all of anything usually is wrong.

There is? As a farmer myself, I find that agriculture runs at the forefront of technology. It is why I love agriculture as we get to play with the cool tech before the masses do.

There are pockets of people who are more interested in a homesteading lifestyle than farming, but any serious commercial operation will jump over any advantageous tech available to them. Of course, not all tech is advantageous; there has to be a compelling business case more than "that is really neat" to justify adoption.

> I also find that the farming community is allergic to money. I don’t know why.

It is a high risk, high reward business. I'm not sure that is the same as being allergic to money.

> I have been told that I don’t have a farmer’s work ethic because I want robots to do the work instead of ‘dirt under my nails’ or because I think food must be at least 4x more expensive given the manual work that goes into organic speciality foods. I also think standing in a farmers market and hawking tomatoes for $2/lb is an utter waste of my time.

Seems like you got caught in one of those homesteading pockets mentioned before. This is not how most farm businesses operate. Farming benefits from scale. Your tomatoes should be sold to a major buyer by the truckload if you're serious about farming and not just enjoying the lifestyle.