Farming: Why don't I see people working in the fields?

[Musicat]

@Smeghead

Singing to the corn to make it grow.

No need. The corn is already as high as an elephant’s eye.

[treis]

@Ludovic

If a farmer never goes out on foot to inspect his crops, he will never be outstanding in his field.

Boooo Hissss throws something

[levdrakon]

In California, especially in the summer, it’s too hot to work during the day, so you’ll see workers out very early morning, before sunup.

[Leo_Bloom]

@Smeghead

Singing to the corn to make it grow.

Or looking for everybody that was wished there.

[thelabdude]

@robert_columbia

Are most of the farms that you can see from the road idle,

Do you see crops or weeds? Even if you see weeds now. within a month the farmer may roll through spraying herbicide and drilling beans covering a huge field in mere hours. It will then need little work until time for harvest.

[DrDeth]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

I own a farm, and you’ll rarely see the Mrs. and I out in the alfalfa fields (unless we’r re-enacting ‘splendor in the grass’).

But nearby, my cousin has a strawberry farm, and from early to mid spring until the end of strawberry harvest, I think someone’s out there working whenever there’s daylight.

Yep you see a lot of migrant farm workers out around here harvesting strawberries and other things that have to be hand-picked. Other than that, most everything is mechanized.

[Max_Torque]

Mechanization also means that things happen very fast. Even at harvest time, unless you’re there at the precise day and time that someone’s harvesting that particular field, you’re not gonna catch anyone out driving the combine. They zip through acres pretty quickly, and then there’s just empty fields to see, maybe bales.

I drive by acres and acres of cotton fields every day (big crops around here are cotton and peanuts). Still, I rarely see anyone harvesting. Most of the time, the fields are full of plants one day, and full of semi-trailer-sized cotton bales the next.