

When Land Is History - jackfoxy
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/when-land-is-history/?singlepage=true

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shanecleveland
History of land use is fascinating to me. I grew up and my parents still live
in a house built by my grandfather. I love looking at old pictures and seeing
what has changed or not changed in even that short 70+ years. And then to
think how the land may have looked and been used in the years before that. I
am in the process of building a home on land owned by my wife's family. They
have only owned it for a short period of time, but the land has a rich history
of settlements, logging, etc.

I think we all have a selfish tendency to think of land and property as being
at its best when we knew it most intimately. But the land was there long
before us and will be there long after.

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randomdata
I'm the seventh generation to work the land on my family farm. It is pretty
amazing to think that so many of my ancestors before me did the very same,
albeit with less modern technology. The original barn and first brick home
(I'm told there was a rough wooden home that preceded the brick one when my
family first settled on the land) still stand there today.

~~~
noahc
Something most people don't realize is that it wasn't that long ago that we
were still farming with mules.

My grandpa farmed with a Jeep that had a PTO and a team of mules into the
60's.

~~~
randomdata
Some still farm that way today. I know my great-grandfather was using tractors
by the 40s, if not before. We still regularly used one of his old relics when
I was a kid. The oldest tractor we still use today is from the 60s, purchased
by my grandfather.

I don't really know much about the farm on that end before that though. I
should do some asking around.

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rdl
"too many liberal arts degrees and too few agribusiness BAs", indeed.

~~~
cadlin
>"too many liberal arts degrees and too few agribusiness BAs"

This is a silly meme. If you look at government data on college degrees (which
only goes up to 2004 as far as I can tell), humanities aren't over-represented
at all, but account for between 8 and 12 percent of Bachelor degrees
awarded[1]. That's History, English, Philosophy, etc. combined[2].

It would be more accurate to say that more people in business should focus on
agribusiness instead of finance, or that social science majors should switch
to agribusiness[2].

And the percentage of humanity degrees awarded is lower than it was forty
years ago, and has been trending down for most of that forty years[3].

Finally, it's rather odd that the author would write that, considering he has
both an undergraduate degree and graduate degree in the classics, of all
things[4].

[1]
[http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...](http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoImageFrame.aspx?i=II-1b.jpg&o=hrcoIIA.aspx__topII1)

[2]
[http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...](http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoImageFrame.aspx?i=II-2.jpg&o=hrcoIIA.aspx__topII2)

[3]
[http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...](http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoImageFrame.aspx?i=II-1a.jpg&o=hrcoIIA.aspx__topII1)

[4]<http://www.victorhanson.com/Author/index.html>

~~~
noahc
I think you've completely missed his point.

His point is that inside of his family there were too many liberal arts
degrees and not enough agribusiness folks. The reality is that if you want to
grow organic, all natural, heirloom plants on that type of land good luck!
That's the type of production liberal arts degree majors tend to favor.

A person with an agribusiness background would come in and say, "Throw up the
irrigators, spray the fertilizer, and lets try to get some organic matter into
the soil".

All he is saying is that his family didn't have the right people in the right
places to make the right decisions at the time.

~~~
maxerickson
Doesn't he say that the heirloom plants saved the farm for 15 years?

~~~
noahc
I'm not that familiar with california agriculture to know if the crops he
mentions are heirloom or not. However, the 15 years specifically mentions
small scale ag which during the 80's made a lot more sense than it does today.

You could be right about the heirlooms.

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pmsaue0
Beautiful/generational land razed for commercial purposes? Welcome to eastern
Kentucky and mountain top removal.

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jorleif
I wonder if more advanced robotics is going to make farming "complicated" land
profitable again. The need for flatness etc. might become irrelevant with
smart enough automation, and some variability in land form could be an
excellent risk mitigation strategy against disease and harsh weather
conditions or variability in fertilizer prices and so on.

~~~
noahc
It depends on what you mean by complicated. First of all you need good black
dirt to farm. If you don't have that no matter how flat it is it isn't going
to work.

They already have levelers[1] available which get us most of the way there.
Again, no good black dirt, it's not worth farming (at scale anyway). A combine
or chopper can easily push you over a quarter million dollars, so the guy
running the thing for a couple of tens of dollars an hour for a few months a
year isn't that much of a cost compared to your input costs, etc.

Variability in land form doesn't contribute to risk mitigation much if at all
unless you're talking about large geographic distances, which of course it's
the fact that diseases and weather systems don't travel far and fast enough
not that the land form is different.

More specifically, GMO provide the best opportunity to address disease and
weather issues. That said, maybe that isn't what we should be optimizing for.

[1][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaYbXtPs_o&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaYbXtPs_o&feature=related)

~~~
jorleif
Variability in land form may lead to different crops being suited for
different parts of the land, which would affect both disease and weather
risks.

