Farming in 2050 ?

[ss55]

Not to hijack Bill(Wis) post below about what the future holds, what are today's farm magazines predicting farming will be like in the year 2050 ?

 

[rrlund]

I haven't seen any predictions in a while. They've been so wrong in the past, I don't know that anybody has the guts to stick their necks out anymore.

 

[NY 986]

More automation of course. Fewer farm numbers. More artificial or synthetic food sources. About as much as can be said without going against board policy.

 

[db4600]

Sows are steady and bores are active. Meanwhile at Chicago

 

[Hoofer B]

People will take a few pills a day for nourishment. The farms will be replaced with farmasuticals. I hope I never see that day. When I was in junior high I predicted tractors that drove themselves. My friends thought I was nuts. Well maybe I am. lol. Bill

 

[rrlund]

That pill thing has been around as long as I have. I was in about the second grade and told one of my best friends that I was going to be a farmer. He said there wasn't any future in it, everybody would just take a pill. That's been over sixty years ago and people are talking about roughage and fiber, not nutrition from pills. It amazes me how much progress has been made in some technologies and how much some other things change at a snail's pace, if at all.

Of course if you listen to some people, all agricultural production in the future will be organic because consumers will demand it. That's as far fetched and impossible as the taking a pill prediction.

 

[NY 986]

Magazines such as Farm Journal predicted fully automated tractors during the 1970's. Funny thing is the then illustrations look a lot like the prototypes shown in magazines now.

 

[Tim in New York]

Ever see the movie Soylent Green?

 

[moresmoke]

My prediction: look at how things are done in Brazil. Minus the transportation issues.

Basically, large corporate entities that operate the farms and contractors that actually do the work.

 

[Hemmjo]

28 years ago, I planted a 5 acre plot of trees so I would have a woods to walk in when hit 100. I figure I will not be able to drive by then. I have 26 years to go.

As far as what farming will be like, All I can say is, it will be very different.

This is a link, not sure why it is not blue.
In the Year 2525. Zagar and Evans


This post was edited by Hemmjo on 12/20/2023 at 04:28 pm.

 

[Chester5731]

I don t know but I sure hope my old JD 55 is still going. I will be 80 and it will be 83.

 

[Janicholson]

Todays magazines have little hope of accuracy in 25 years or so. They had no concept of the electronics and satellite positioning sensors 25 years ago, but look where we are. I'll be 99 and probably not throwing bales. I will predict that poor and scrub acres will be planted with photovoltaic arrays. I will predict the use of high technology battery powered machines. I will predict far more careful application of fertilizer in square meter based need. I predict far better feedlot pollution control and ground water protection. I see far better technology used on transportation using rail systems and trucking. I do not see a good fit between autonomous vehicles and human driven vehicles being outlawed, but it will still have issues. Jim

 

[connor9988]

It will be corporate farming as the big farms keep getting bigger and buying up the smaller farms. The ag equipment companies prefer it this way as they can charge large prices to stable customers.

We already can see the corporate farms taking over today. 1000's of acres are becoming a norm.

 

[Chester5731]

(quoted from post at 18:46:17 12/20/23) It will be corporate farming as the big farms keep getting bigger and buying up the smaller farms. The ag equipment companies prefer it this way as they can charge large prices to stable customers.

We already can see the corporate farms taking over today. 1000's of acres are becoming a norm.

Unfortunately I think u are right.

 

[rrlund]

Let's be realistic guys, that's only 27 years. Let's look back that far. That's 1996-97. How much has changed? Little things, but in the whole scheme of things, it's still planting seeds, breeding livestock and growing things. That ain't gonna change. A whole bunch of folks who are farming now will still be farming then.

 

[DoubleO7]

(reply to post at 22:43:00 12/20/23)

<They had no concept of the electronics and satellite positioning sensors 25 years ago, but look where we are.>

25 years ago ain't that far ago.

 

[Ken Macfarlane]

Not to be too contrarian but yeah we had light bars and gps with
palm pilots, close to 25 years of the JD Brown box terminal now
too. 2000 or so we had a handheld Magellan gps connected to
a laptop via serial cable mapping fields more accurately than a
phone app can do now.

In the time since the biggest change has become subscription
based everything, and I hate it. Software to equipment,
everything is a monthly payment. No thanks, not for this guy.

 

[Jim in LA]

It will probably be the same method Cain used.

 

[730 virgil]

if the greenes have there way farming will be done with horses

 

[Traditional Farmer]

Average age of farmers is somewhere in the 60 some year old area so there is going to be a lot of turnover and a lot of land is going to large corporations.Also most large farmers are getting support money from the gov't and I can't see trillions of dollars in deficit spending being continued but for so long.A corporation owning a million acres is happy with a low profit per acre that an individual farmer with a thousand or two thousand acres would starve to death on.The more mechanized farming becomes the less its needs an individual person actually out on the farm doing things.Unfortunately I see guys like Bill Gates being the future in the large farming areas.