Welcome to another edition of SFTW Plus. SFTW Plus is the paid version of “Software is Feeding the World” and includes all Sunday newsletters, SFTW Convos series, Scaling Innovation series, and access to the archives.
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Happenings
- I co-hosted (and guest hosted) a [History] of Agriculture podcast episode with Tim Hammerich for the Future of Agriculture podcast series. The topic was based on a book by Neil Dahlstrom called “Tractor Wars” which explored the early history of the invention, and adoption of gas powered tractors in the early 20th century.
- Over the last few weeks, I have started offering corporate subscriptions to different organizations. A corporate subscription comes with a significant discount, full access to SFTW Plus and is paid for by your organization, typically through their training and education budgets. If you would like to sign up your organization for a corporate subscription program, just reply to this email.
The phenomenon of the “hallowing out of the middle class” in the US has been extensively studied. There are many reasons to explain the stagnation in wages for the middle class. The adoption of automation has been one of the main reasons for the loss of jobs over the last few decades, especially in manufacturing.
On the other hand, the lack of automation might create significant challenges for keeping the middle of the pack crops to continue to grow in California. (The “middle of the pack crops” are crops with a market value which is not in the top quadrant but somewhere in the middle). It could hollow out the middle crops due to lack of automation, instead of presence of automation.
The diminishing middle
Last week, I was driving around Merced county in California visiting some growers. It is a very agricultural county in California with a lot of almond trees, and dairy operations. The setting was beautiful as I drove down county roads, and the weather was a perfect 70 degree Fahrenheit. I visited a few sweet potato growers to understand some of their challenges.
A farm in Merced County, California (photo by Rhishi Pethe)
But when you go talk to growers there, you realize there are significant challenges ahead, depending on which crop they are growing.
Merced is the fifth biggest county based on the value of agriculture production in the state of California. For reference, California is the biggest state in terms of the value of crop cash receipts (2022 data) of $ 55 billion, with Iowa at number two with $ 45 billion. Merced county’s total value of agricultural production in 2022 was $ 4.5 billion.