Re:My years working on black programs
by Loughla on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @11:03AM
(#21585019)
I've been a farmer for most of my life in conjunction with my day job, and this is correct.
There was an article recently in a modern farming magazine about how restaurants and downstream consumer organizations and businesses want to use blockchain technology to track where a cow was raised, where it was processed and how, and when it became the hamburger or whatever you're eating so that customers can scan it and feel better about themselves and their choices.
Cool. Super cool technology. That I will never use on my farm because it provides me with absolutely 0 incentive at the start of the stream other than increased overhead. After looking into the technology, there are ways to use that data to track cattle, and ways to use that data to track yield and feed ratios and that sort of thing, but it's not the purpose, and therefore almost impossible to get out of the system. It also would be super easy to game by the large 'family owned' farms (sort of like how they do it now anyway).
And I already do what I need with excel, it's just time consuming. So it's another example of 'BUT IT'S TECHNOLOGY' that just doesn't appeal to me.
For other examples see: automated weed control, most automated irrigation systems, most automated weather and climate tracking systems, and definitely any/all automated feed and livestock management systems.
The one thing you said that I want to push back - from a very US centered perspective - very little farming is done via handshake anymore. Any farmer who is actually able to survive does so by playing the markets, by pushing formal contracts, and by being smarter than that. Nothing on the outgoing side is left to chance anymore, because all of our inputs are based on chance already (weather, performance, yield).
There was an article recently in a modern farming magazine about how restaurants and downstream consumer organizations and businesses want to use blockchain technology to track where a cow was raised, where it was processed and how, and when it became the hamburger or whatever you're eating so that customers can scan it and feel better about themselves and their choices.
Cool. Super cool technology. That I will never use on my farm because it provides me with absolutely 0 incentive at the start of the stream other than increased overhead. After looking into the technology, there are ways to use that data to track cattle, and ways to use that data to track yield and feed ratios and that sort of thing, but it's not the purpose, and therefore almost impossible to get out of the system. It also would be super easy to game by the large 'family owned' farms (sort of like how they do it now anyway).
And I already do what I need with excel, it's just time consuming. So it's another example of 'BUT IT'S TECHNOLOGY' that just doesn't appeal to me.
For other examples see: automated weed control, most automated irrigation systems, most automated weather and climate tracking systems, and definitely any/all automated feed and livestock management systems.
The one thing you said that I want to push back - from a very US centered perspective - very little farming is done via handshake anymore. Any farmer who is actually able to survive does so by playing the markets, by pushing formal contracts, and by being smarter than that. Nothing on the outgoing side is left to chance anymore, because all of our inputs are based on chance already (weather, performance, yield).