In 2019, a guy at my work told me that his cousin, who was significantly more rural than him, was working on plotting all his fields with drones so he could could largely automate harvesting as well as engage in targeted fertilizing, pesticide and herbicide application. Same person also apparently was running a (legal) grow operation out of a big barn that they were trying to make carbon neutral with on-site renewables.

Folks in ‘rural’ trades can be very high tech if they know how it’ll make them money.

^ Excellent comment.

So more reason to hate farmers doing the wrong thing?

A large reason for that is that corporate farms have won out over family farms. The family farms that are still standing have taken similar approaches and there's been a lot more effort invested in actually learning the science and business as you point out. 30 years ago it was a much different story.

Especially now with the crazy tech being put into harvesting equipment. These guys can basically field strip a near fully autonomous combine harvester and put it back together with little more than a socket set and good ol’ grit. Not to mention they are definitely doing soil testing all the time and 100% know what should be planted where and when to maintain soil health.

I watched a piece about machine vision being used to identify pests that harvesting equipment then shoots with lasers rather than just full coverage pesticide spraying. These folks are honestly near the leading edge of some wild tech, because they are actually putting it to clear, effective, use rather than generating 13.5 fingered images of their favorite cartoon character in the nude like so many other AI enjoyers.

Looks like it to me. Something weird is going on with the red shirt's waistline and where are his arms? Plus the shadows are too harsh for an overcast sky.

Yes it's confirmed AI but dropping pic quality so no one can tell

Don't kid yourself, there is still an assload of convention tillage and monocropping going on, at least in my neck of the woods.

I've surveyed large swaths of agricultural land; hundreds of inspection points, and the B horizon has been completely lost due to annual tillage. In one case I had two pits 200 m away from each other. One was in the field and one was in a stand of trees they didn't clear. The field profile had maybe 15 cm of A horizon with no structure over a calcareous C. The bush profile had 50 cm of well structured A horizon, and another 20 cm of B overtop of the same calcareous C. It was beautiful.

In another field, a guy was moldboarding... This is just one of the surveys I've been on.

There's a lot of guys out there who know what they are doing, and they do it well, but at least in my opinion, regenerative Ag needs to catch on more. From my perspective, there seems to be resistance, though, and I'm not sure if it's from economics, generational practices, or a combination of factors.

I saw it and just moved on because I was going to get pissed off arguing with assholes that have never seen a tractor first hand.

We put hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of land into legume fallow and cover crops in order to increase fertility. We plan for weeks ahead of every planting season to understand soil tests and come up with strategies that get a crop off and built organic matter. We spend hundreds of thousands on equipment to reduce tillage and encourage soil biomes.

But I guess we're still stupid fucking assholes to everyone. Kinda gotten used to the hate.

Yeah I know this is just an AI generated meme, but people who look like this are actually pretty solar punk, in my experience. I first heard of fracking radishes from a 70 year old farmer, 15 years ago. This meme just promotes culture war bullshit.

This is WAY more likely in my experience, they know all about cover crops and that's about it.