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A comment on John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX. Parent comment

Re:John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX by mrangle on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @12:11PM (#39192686)
Rent seeking is right. Farmers shouldn't be subjected to landlord economics via their equipment. That is, equipment cost shouldn't scale simply to eat farming profit (as rent costs quickly rise to eat rising incomes).

I'd want to see the numbers on exaclty how much supposed always-up farming equipment saves in crop production, compared to farmers that don't use it.

In fact, I know for certain that the most productive farmland in the US, per area unit, is least likely to use motorized equipment of any kind. And when they do it isn't equipment on par with John Deere.

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Re:John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX by LudwigNagasena on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @12:55PM (#39193310)
> Farmers shouldn't be subjected to landlord economics via their equipment.

That’s a funny way to phrase it considering that many farmers are landlords.

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Re:John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX by rangerelf on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @01:41PM (#39193920)
Landlords are landlords, farmers are farmers.

If you're renting a zillion acres to someone that grows corn or wheat on it, you're not a farmer, your a landlord; the renter is the farmer.

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Re:John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX by LudwigNagasena on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @03:38PM (#39195448)
If you own a zillion acres and someone grows corn or wheat on it without renting the land, you're a farmer and they are a farmworker.
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Re:John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX by philwelch on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @12:46PM (#39193192)
> In fact, I know for certain that the most productive farmland in the US, per area unit, is least likely to use motorized equipment of any kind.

Isn’t this exactly what you’d expect? Motorized equipment is for working vast amounts of farmland as efficiently as possible, so the only farmland that would be worked by hand would have to be much more lucrative in comparison.

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