From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Dec 13 1998 - 22:08:09 MST
Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> Spike Jones wrote: i look forward to the day
> > when engineers are turned loose on the problem of how to harvest all crops
> > mechanically. that sounds like a fun problem to work. spike
>
> Spike, agriculture is one of the most highly automated areas of our economy.
> from a historical perspective, the job of agricultural automation is roughly
> 98 percent complete: it used to take 100 peasent farmers to support one...
thanks for the info dan. {8^D now that you mention it, i do recall seeing
on tv those big wheat harvester machines. i may have been thinking of the migrant
laborers i see harvesting veggies out in the central valley.
someone said they were to visit california and asked what they should go see.
well, there are plenty of tech museums and that that kinda stuff, but the biggest
emotional impact for me is something that one might never see advertised on
a tourist info: the farmland of californias central valley. one can get on
interstate 5 and drive down thru there as fast as you dare go, and on either
side of the freeway, as far as the eye can see, is farmland, growing everything
imaginable, and it goes on for hoooours that way, hunnndreds of kilometers.
that blew my mind when i saw it. one gets the impression that there is enough
food being grown between san jose and la to feed the world. i see why farmers
are having a tough go of it: waaay too much land being cultivated. spike
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