In case it wasn’t apparent from my last post, I have never had the patience or the mind for details or technical explanations of things. Stretching my mind in this way is actually something about the farm experience that I’ve been both looking forward to and dreading. That being said, today’s 5-6 hour farm safety session was very out of my comfort zone. But I really appreciated it especially since one side effect of my more abstract, non-detail oriented mind is that I tend to be a bit absent minded, and as a result clumsy. My parents have often half-jokingly said how this would get me killed or seriously injured some day, and after hearing some of the tractor accident horror stories I had to agree. The tip I found most interesting, and incidentally also related to my last post, was to “read the owners manual” of your equipment.

I have never read an owners manual in my life. I’m one of those many people who does not care how my “machinery” works as long as it does whatever its supposed to do in order to make my life easier or entertain me. But the idea of really understanding how things work, even if for the most part we no longer can work on our smartphones or laptops ourselves in a workshop (while the Denny’s of this world continue to push these limits) seems very appealing. This is true especially in light of my concerns, mentioned in the last post, about losing our ability to create things which has been such a defining characteristic of humanity throughout all of known history of civilization. I think that from now on I will try to make a conscious effort to read (or at least skim) the owner’s manuals of the various gadgets I own.

As the farm safety session progressed I was beginning to warm up to the world of practical concerns and technical explanations. When Kevin Butts began to talk about the ins and outs of Precision Agriculture my interest was piqued. I have always considered one of the most important questions agriculture must address to be how to go about feeding the 7 soon to be 9 billion people on earth. It makes sense that the answer to this would be to make farming as precise as possible in order to save time and money, use minimum amount of chemicals, and conserve product. While the technological innovations behind these advancements are something I find it easy to adjust to there are others that I found harder to accept. Particularly the idea of creating drones to kill individual weeds using a laser. While this would do something good in eliminating the need to spray chemicals on our food, I still am very skeptical of the creation of any technology with such capabilities. I am interested to see how the development of these new technologies play out and the ethical debates that will surround them.