[ExI] Why farmers? was more deaths

[William Flynn Wallace]

90% of farms in the US are corporate.  About 5% single family farms.  So I
wonder what the people who are blessed with farming genes are doing
nowadays?

My grandfather inherited 10K acres of flat central Louisiana farm land, had
two wives and eight children and I wound up with nothing.

The cousin who lives there watches the farm being farmed. A corporation
comes in, plants, comes back and poisons, comes back and harvests and hauls
it off.  He spends no time farming.  This is not atypical.

bill w

On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 6:56 PM Keith Henson via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Why don't the coastal elites move to Kansas and become farmers?
>
> > Because it sucks.  Those votes are the prize for being farm slaves for
> the
> entire country.  Not worth it in my opinion, and most people I know agree.
>
> This can be understood from evolution.  For the last 12,000 years or
> so, most of our ancestors were farmers--mine were up to a couple of
> generations ago.  That's enough time for selection to have acted on
> genes for whatever psychological traits are important for being a
> successful farmer.
>
> There are a fair number of such psychological traits.  I can't name
> all of them, but I remember reading about some people who did not have
> the genetic (and cultural) background for being a farmer.  Even
> *given* a working farm, it was beyond them.  They could not grok that
> cows have to be milked twice a day.
>
> The people who are farmers in the current world are the result of
> 12,000 years of selection.  They are highly self-motivated and *like*
> farming.  That's fortunate for us who live in cities and like that.
>
> Keith
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