Farmers always worked from home • Hacker News Board

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#111

Post by obeid » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #82

maweki wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Entitlements" is a strange word for this. The fact is, that farming dairy, cattle, and produce pays so little through the primary market that those people would starve if not for government subsidies. The people who literally prevent every other person on the continent from starving. Farming is hard and pays little.

"Entitlement" is a term of art [1] that means that the farmers are legally entitled to those benefits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entitlement

Doesn't mean it was not a bad choice of a word to represent the concept. Politicians who create and use these terms are doing it with intent, if it was up to them, they would indeed starve the farmers, you, me and everyone we know.

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#112

Post by screye » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #93

screye wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that it seems to have peaked around 18%, but mostly hovered between 10-18%. It sat around 15% during the civil war. Note that these numbers do not include native Americans, who constituted between 1-3 million themselves, since the census didn't count them. Considering them as part of the total should indeed bring the numbers under 10%. Whether that is fair or not is up to the reader :) I still maintain…

It does not seem to me that Native Americans should count here. Whole discussion completely ignores them in all aspects. The debates are about Americans, it would be like counting Mexico into stats. > I still maintain that the majority of the people working on farms were most likely white. This is especially true since many states did not have slaves at all. I will admit that it is likely, that the most gruelling wor…

Fair enough. Your comment adds important context.

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#113

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #45

s1artibartfast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that if you just providing capital seed and oversight, you aren't farming, you are investing.

That's literally what farmer is defined as: Someone who owns or manages a farm. If farmers aren't farming, what are they doing?

My point is that a CEO at an investment firm that passively owns a farm is not a farmer, at least for the purpose of getting an accurate understanding of a farmer's work life balance.

Similarly, business operations desk jockey for a multinational ag business is not a farmer.

I think the parent post was referring to those who perform physical labor on a farm and directly oversee that labor.

Yes, I am gatekeeping being a "farmer"

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#114

Post by Retric » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

matkoniecz wrote: post #63

Retric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preindustrial farming involved a lot of downtime outside of the tropics. Essentially a few weeks a year involved 14+ hour days, but there simply wasn’t that much to do the rest of the year. It’s a common misconception that summer breaks where for farmers, but historically rurual areas actually had school in summer and winter with breaks in the spring and fall simply because that’s when there was a lot of work to get…

https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-... "So, 7 hours for sewing, 72 for weaving, 500 for spinning, or 579 hours total to make one shirt. At minimum wage - $7.25 an hour - that shirt would cost $4,197.25. And that's just a standard shirt. And that's not counting the work that goes into raising sheep or growing cotton and then making the fiber fit for weaving." https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/coll…

That’s quite regional and within a fairly narrow window.

“Between 1315 and 1545 and cloth produced per capita increased five-fold (the English population declined during the period due to the Black Death).” https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t... A lot of artwork is post spinning wheel which dramatically changed the economics of owning cloth.

This gets into some major differences over time. Leather or nothing used to be very common clothing choices globally. It’s only relatively recently that cloth has become so ubiquitous.

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#115

Post by redmaverick » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #87

snarf21 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people who think farming sounds great are people who have never farmed. Having all your income depend on the weather or random government policies/tariffs is heart breaking. You need tremendous scale to weather the storm. Go watch "Clarkson's Farm" to get a glimpse of the realities. (Remember that he is extremely rich and doesn't even care if the farm loses money.) The only good thing about farming is that y…

I'm no farmer, but you can see the extremely expensive and sophisticated farming machines pretty much every time you drive past a rural area. Giant watering machines, extremely weird "collector" thingies, and a whole slew of farmers complaining to John Deere about "right to repair". Modern Farming is about having huge infrastructure so that very few people can create lots and lots of food. Between the fertilizer, the…

are there any startup opportunities / products built for farmers that can generate revenue?

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#116

Post by agumonkey » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

spelunker wrote: post #55

This whole article reads like someone out of touch. We went to the countryside to observe the pastoral lifestyle! Hey look at these farmers! They're "working from home" all the time! Wow look at them milking cows! Farming is a hell of a lot of work and they have a poor "work life balance" out of necessity. There's too much to do. Maybe they find it rewarding, but I don't think it's an ideal everyone should be strivin…

I really wonder what causes the long hours ? market dynamics running prices to the ground until the guys cant squeeze any more minute from a day ? or just too much tradition in organization forcing them to spend more time than necessary in the fields ?

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#117

Post by hondo77 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

chirau wrote: post #90

snarf21 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people who think farming sounds great are people who have never farmed. Having all your income depend on the weather or random government policies/tariffs is heart breaking. You need tremendous scale to weather the storm. Go watch "Clarkson's Farm" to get a glimpse of the realities. (Remember that he is extremely rich and doesn't even care if the farm loses money.) The only good thing about farming is that y…

I have to disagree with you. Or maybe farming is just terrible here in the US because of all the rules and crap with companies like Monsanto. Where I come from, farming is a pretty fulfilling endeavor. Both my parents left senior corporate roles to pursue farming because they love it so much. Even when they made their first money working, they bought a piece of land and were there pretty much every weekend. They star…

> ...they bought a piece of land and were there pretty much every weekend.

That's not farming for a living. That is a hobby. Big difference.

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#118

Post by clipradiowallet » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

Farming is hard work. Commercial farmers in my area pull 18+ hour days during harvest time. I don't think articles about farming quite capture just how labor-intensive farming is, how little sleep you get, and the overly hot/wet/dry conditions you have to work through during harvest.

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#119

Post by tehjoker » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

A big difference between farming and WFH discourse is that if you own the farm, your labor is all to your benefit and controlled by you (even if circumstances can demand a lot). Office work is dictated by bosses that control you. Your labor and reward are alienated from you. Strict separation is a good idea because that shit is toxic.

Re: Farmers always worked from home

#120

Post by Causality1 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

spelunker wrote: post #55

This whole article reads like someone out of touch. We went to the countryside to observe the pastoral lifestyle! Hey look at these farmers! They're "working from home" all the time! Wow look at them milking cows! Farming is a hell of a lot of work and they have a poor "work life balance" out of necessity. There's too much to do. Maybe they find it rewarding, but I don't think it's an ideal everyone should be strivin…

It's just the "noble savage" fetish for the 21st century.

How did they all survive without mental breakdowns and Harvard Business Review articles praising strict Work-Life Balance?

They didn't. They beat the shit out of their wives and children. They got pulled out of school to help their parents work the farm. They didn't get to have a comfortable retirement. They spent the last decades of their life in chronic pain. There is no way in hell this dude has ever had a real conversation with an old person who grew up farming.