A compelling thought, though with the likely advent of fully automated, digitally integrated agriculture in the coming decades, such a program must obviously serve to educate the students much more than boost farm outputs. The farms of the future - which the students need to visit - will need to be condensed inside vertical factory buildings to specialise in algae, invertebrates, and hydroponics, they will possess the technological capability to industrially produce both milk and meat without featuring a single cow; and as such be much more abstracted from nature-proper than the current “conventional” model. I must especially advise against the romanticisation of the small old private farms, which explicitly goes against the lessons learnt from Soviet mechanisation.
Moreover, industrial society suffers neither from a shortage of food nor of specialised technical skills, but from a lack of basic general knowledge; which begs the question why farming should be special in meriting its own such program. Would it not be better for students to also be acquainted with workplaces that are and will remain closer to nature, like forestry and biological conservation; or in need of more immediate social attention, like health and elderly care?
I’d also support a program similar to the chinese one where urban students are sent to the countryside to help rural farmers
A compelling thought, though with the likely advent of fully automated, digitally integrated agriculture in the coming decades, such a program must obviously serve to educate the students much more than boost farm outputs. The farms of the future - which the students need to visit - will need to be condensed inside vertical factory buildings to specialise in algae, invertebrates, and hydroponics, they will possess the technological capability to industrially produce both milk and meat without featuring a single cow; and as such be much more abstracted from nature-proper than the current “conventional” model. I must especially advise against the romanticisation of the small old private farms, which explicitly goes against the lessons learnt from Soviet mechanisation.
Moreover, industrial society suffers neither from a shortage of food nor of specialised technical skills, but from a lack of basic general knowledge; which begs the question why farming should be special in meriting its own such program. Would it not be better for students to also be acquainted with workplaces that are and will remain closer to nature, like forestry and biological conservation; or in need of more immediate social attention, like health and elderly care?