1,000 Food Chain Radio Shows
January 14, 2015
California Drought
January 22, 2015Food Chain Radio Show #998
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Robotic Farm Equipment
Will humans still farm in 2050?
Guest: Attorney Roger Royce,
Host of Silicon Valley’s AgTech Incubator and Conference
This Poll is closed!!
Here is Michael Olson’s fundamental equation of agriculture: Time + Money + Know-How = A Successful Farm.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Will humans still farm in 2050?
Time is the investment of being there, as in, “Farmers spend time in the field.” Money is the stock of accumulated assets used to pay expenses, as in, “Farmers spend money on seeds, equipment and land.” Know-how is the investment of technological skill, as in, “Farmers know how to convert energy from the sun and nutrients from the earth into food.”
The amount of each input required for success can best be described as a mathematical problem: Given the amount of time at our command, money at our disposal, and know-how at the ready: what is the proportion in which these three elements should be employed to produce the maximum.
For most of our millennia upon the land, time and know-how were the dominant inputs, as there was very little money. Then all but a very few farmers moved into town, and time became very expensive. Fortunately, the rapidly escalating value of farmland made borrowed money very cheap, especially when inflation simply erased varying percentages of the debt every year. With money to spend, farmers could simply buy all the time and know-how they needed, and so went out and purchased technology in the form of equipment, chemicals and genetics.
Technology has made it possible for individual farmers to grow much more than individual farmers could in the past. However, today’s farmer does not stand in the field alone, he or she has an army of know-how standing with them– well, they are most likely doing there standing in town, but that’s besides the point.
Given how much technology has changed agriculture in the past hundred years, we simply must ask…
Will humans still farm in 2050?
