An Urban's Rural View

Perhaps you've seen the BBC skit (http://tiny.cc/…) in which a swaggering party guest keeps gloating that he is a brain surgeon and deriding other guests' occupations. What you do is nice, he says, but "it's not exactly brain surgery, is it?"

The skit's finale is as satisfying as it is predictable. In walks a rocket scientist to deliver the braggart's comeuppance. Brain surgery, eh? "Not exactly rocket science, is it?"

Braggadocio breeds resentment, the skit reminds us, and rank-ordering non-comparable things breeds nonsense. Is one science really more complex than another? By what criteria?

Yet the rank-ordering game is fun to play, and inoffensive (however inconclusive) if divorced from boasting. In that spirit, let us ponder the claim put forth in Paul Conklin's book "A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture Since 1929." (http://tiny.cc/…)

Says Conklin, on page 100: "Farming, at the highest level of output, is arguably our most demanding profession."

That, at first glance, seems as barren a boast as the brain surgeon's. What does "most demanding" mean? What yardstick can measure how "demanding" a profession is?

Conklin offers but narrow support for the assertion, hanging it on the "hundreds of new machines" introduced after World War II. "The new tools required more specialized skills from farm operators, exponentially increased the amount of land needed for efficient farms, and widened the gap between highly efficient and specialized farmers and those who could not compete."

Surely there's more to the case for farming than that.

I'm no farmer, so I invite readers to correct me, but what impresses me about farmers is not so much their "specialized skills," as important as those are, but the sheer number of things they must be good at.

Successful farmers must have a basic grasp of agronomy, meteorology and mechanics. They need some understanding of commodity trading, tax law and environmental regulation, as well.

Farmers have to win the confidence of lenders. They must master the devilish complexities of federal farm programs. They need sound business instincts and the ability to make sensible decisions. More and more they have to know how to manage people.

And they must have cool nerves for taking risk. Very cool nerves.

A brain surgeon or a rocket scientist -- or for that matter a tax lawyer or an agronomist or a meteorologist -- trains for years and years, burrowing deeply into a long, narrow tunnel of knowledge. Farmers don't have to do that. But arguably they make up in breadth what they lack in depth.

So which profession is the most complex -- or, to use Conklin's notion, most demanding? Alas, comparing farming to brain surgery is ultimately like comparing cabbages to kumquats. Listing the attributes of each may be entertaining but drawing a conclusion about their relative value stumbles on the lack of a standard.

This much seems true. Modern farming is more complex and demanding than a great many occupations. As a writer, I'd be the first to concede it's more demanding than writing.

I mean, writing is not exactly brain surgery, is it?

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

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