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My Experience as a Rice Farmer

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Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#171

Post by alikim »

black3r wrote: post #72

I hear sentiments about farming from lots of burnout software developers. I always wonder what made them become developers at all. Cause my primary motivation for selecting a job was that I explicitly didn't want to ever work manually, I knew that since early childhood and it still didn't change even after 2 burnouts. My secondary motivation was that I liked working with machinery/computers. Also when I started codin…

Personally I love a lot about software engineering (iterative problem solving, sorting through complexities, the predictability you mention or at least how things are logical and often deterministic, etc) but I also love being outside and moving my body. After years of sitting behind a computer all day I do day dream about work that fulfills me in other ways. I'm sure if I took a different job and spent all day in the field I would miss software in a similar vein; time is finite and the number of possible ways you can spend it is not.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#172

Post by FlyingSnake »

srean wrote: post #81
FlyingSnake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the rice varieties in India should be promoted and protected more. The diversity and health benefits of these varieties is immense.

This is so important. Kerala in particular had a treasure trove of varieties, some well suited to low rainfall, resistant to local pests. I am sure other states had/has such diversity too, I am just not knowledgeable enough. These genotypes are being lost to industrial mono-cropping. The government is doing nothing about it.

There is hope. India's Central Rice Research Institute is quite active and is working on some of the problems.

https://icar-crri.in/popular-nrri-varieties/

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#173

Post by ErroneousBosh »

satvikpendem wrote: post #160
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not really "fairly untouched", then. You're going to need more farms and more farmers, and no-one can afford to be shipping food halfway round the planet.

It is often costlier and worse for the environment to ship locally than across the world. https://www.wpr.org/news/locally-grown-fruits-veggies-expens...

But it's more ecologically sustainable to eat what grows where you live.

We do not have the capacity to ship food halfway round the world because picky eaters don't like the idea of eating meat and potatoes.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#174

Post by 9rx »

aledevv wrote: post #46

> Doing a day of manual labour, chatting shit, then going for the onsen and some BBQ and beers is far better than grinding away at some enterprise SaaS that will probably disappear in a few years. I particularly agree with this statement. I don't know why manual work has been so denigrated over the last century. We believed that office labor was more important and healthier than manual labor. I don't think so. As a d…

> I don't know why manual work has been so denigrated over the last century.

As a farmer, it is funny to see how people react to you based on the current profitability winds. When farming is a money maker, everyone acts envious and treats you like a king. When times are tough, they think you're a slack-jawed yokel.

I expect in that lies the answer to your question: We denigrate anything that isn't, as a rule, making a lot of money. Manual jobs generally haven't made much money in the last century, and humorously the exceptions, like professional athlete, get exempted from being considered manual work.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#175

Post by satvikpendem »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #173
satvikpendem wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often costlier and worse for the environment to ship locally than across the world. https://www.wpr.org/news/locally-grown-fruits-veggies-expens...

But it's more ecologically sustainable to eat what grows where you live. We do not have the capacity to ship food halfway round the world because picky eaters don't like the idea of eating meat and potatoes.

> But it's more ecologically sustainable to eat what grows where you live.

Depends on the food, if you're clearing land for a new crop (which many countries have done historically and still do today) then it's not sustainable. And if the native crops are simply not as good nutritionally as the new crop then it's better to eat the new crop even at the ecological cost of the native one, e.g. potatoes vs barley in Ireland.

I'm not sure what you're referring to in your second sentence, not sure why picky eaters wouldn't like meat and potatoes or what that has to do with shipping in general, not even the fact that we do indeed have the capacity and will to ship food halfway around the world already today.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#176

Post by bgnn »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #22
TheDong wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed it's a roughly 2x increase (5kg supermarket bag from 2000 jpy to 4000). Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc.

> Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc. There's a nasty interaction among those concerns: as the basic staple food of the diet, rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food, like meat. Which means that a spike in the price of rice is effectively targeted at people who can't afford to substitute other foods.

Wait. Dod I read this right? Are you saying rice isn't real food but meat is?

I understand most cultures over-appreciate meat, but treating a premium carb source like rice lowly is a surprise.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#177

Post by macleginn »

adrianN wrote: post #144
macleginn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of areas in Western Europe are either completely deforested or have very weird low-density half-dead wooded areas, especially Germany. One has to go all the way to Poland/Serbia/Bulgaria to get a real forest experience again.

A good way to destroy real forests is moving a lot of people closer to them to have a forest experience near their house.

Surprisingly, this seems to be not true. Moscow, a city of 10+ million people, has huge forests inside or adjacent to the city limits. People leave rubbish here and there, but unless forests are rezoned and actively developed as "recreation zones" or some such, they are doing okay. One can easily find more species of birds in a large Moscow park than in the whole of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The trick is not depleting the ecosystem to begin with.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#178

Post by watwut »

senttoschool wrote: post #126
watwut wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

City kids have friends, play outside and go visit friends. That is completely normal in most world cities. And yes, where public transport exists, city kids do use public transport to get to school, to visit friends or to go to the gym. > I feel sorry when I see kids today depressed, lonely, and distrusts society. The weird thing is, rural people show a lot of distrust and fear that city people seem to show less. Rur…

City kids have friends, play outside and go visit friends. Yes, and city kids also eat, poop, and talk. :) I think it's the degree that matters. This is simply not true. If you look at social issues like alcoholism, drug use, suicides or domestic violence ... villages have plenty of those. Degree matters here too.

> I think it's the degree that matters.

City kids do not have less friends then rural kids. They do not socialize less. And if their super local turns up mistreating them, they have actual option to go elsewhere.

> Degree matters here too.

Yes. Small villages have more of these. The rural culture of alcoholism and domestic violence acceptance is both something very real and traditional. What are we talking about here, seriously. You frequently had to drink with others, else you was an outsider. And if family situation turned out bad, you have literally no where to go. (It is not like it would be easy in the city. But you have to from village to city to maybe get help.)

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#180

Post by matthewkayin »

black3r wrote: post #72

I hear sentiments about farming from lots of burnout software developers. I always wonder what made them become developers at all. Cause my primary motivation for selecting a job was that I explicitly didn't want to ever work manually, I knew that since early childhood and it still didn't change even after 2 burnouts. My secondary motivation was that I liked working with machinery/computers. Also when I started codin…

I'm someone who started programming when I was in middle school and went into this career field for the passion. But my passion was and is programming, not corporate office work.

In my career so far, I've spent most of my time troubleshooting AWS configs, combing through cloudwatch logs, and wringing requirements out of people, and a lot less of my time actually solving interesting problems.

The walls of my office are gray, as is the carpet, the desks, and the walls of the bullpens. There are awful fluorescent lights overhead, and my eyes are dry and tired. I am exhausted at the end of the day because of the sensory overload of people being on constant teams meetings all around me. They speak with their outside voices, like children.

So yes, I love software development, and maybe someday I will find a better job in this field that gives me the kind of challenging work and problem solving that I signed up for, but working outdoors? surrounded by the sounds of nature with the sun on my face? I'm sure there's a catch, but it sounds nice.

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