The Future of Farming

Farming has little or no future. This is bad news for any country that relies heavily on its farmers and I'll tell you why.

To explain this story I'll start by talking about cars. Cars have changed a lot in the last few years, but if you went back to the days of the Ford Model T and took a driver in a time machine to 2008, a hundred or so years later, that driver from 1908 would easily understand how to drive a modern car, automatic transmissions and all.

But twenty years on and by 2028, the car that drives itself will be commonplace, how technology will have changed and what would our driver from 1908 think then? Would that driver from 1908 even know how to order up such a car without first going into the showroom?

What has this got to do with farming? A lot is the answer. Farmers are not like that driver from 1908, they're stuck in the Middle Ages. Even if you brought forward a farmer from thousands of years ago they'd probably still manage to figure things out.

But wait, we are about to enter an era of rapid technological change that will wipe out agriculture. It's called manufactured food. Not primary produce processed in a factory, but food manufactured (3D printed or whatever maybe in your own home, you'll have cobalt, iron and iodine delivered in sacks) from the basic elements themselves. All we are as a species is carbon based, mostly water (two of hydrogen one oxygen), with other minerals chucked in there. We are now on the threshold of manufactured food from those elements, and the quantity will be practically limitless. That's the end of farming.

This spells doom for any country like New Zealand which nearly made it. From the late 1970's to the mid 1980's its Prime Minister Rob Muldoon knew the country had to industrialise or die, but it didn't listen and turned to relying on its farmers even more than it had in the past. The dairying industry is now its top earner. But hang on, you can make milk, and have it any colour you want without involving cows, or water from the mountains, or fields of grass. Manufactured milk can even be clear like spring water itself. This means countries like New Zealand will cease to exist or become poor overnight, or both.

Who becomes rich? Industrialised countries that own the technology that's who.