Comment by cadlin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cadlin | Hacker News Reader

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>"too many liberal arts degrees and too few agribusiness BAs"

This is a silly meme. If you look at government data on college degrees (which only goes up to 2004 as far as I can tell), humanities aren't over-represented at all, but account for between 8 and 12 percent of Bachelor degrees awarded[1]. That's History, English, Philosophy, etc. combined[2].

It would be more accurate to say that more people in business should focus on agribusiness instead of finance, or that social science majors should switch to agribusiness[2].

And the percentage of humanity degrees awarded is lower than it was forty years ago, and has been trending down for most of that forty years[3].

Finally, it's rather odd that the author would write that, considering he has both an undergraduate degree and graduate degree in the classics, of all things[4].

[1] http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...

[2] http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...

[3] http://archive102009.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIm...

[4]http://www.victorhanson.com/Author/index.html

I think you've completely missed his point.

His point is that inside of his family there were too many liberal arts degrees and not enough agribusiness folks. The reality is that if you want to grow organic, all natural, heirloom plants on that type of land good luck! That's the type of production liberal arts degree majors tend to favor.

A person with an agribusiness background would come in and say, "Throw up the irrigators, spray the fertilizer, and lets try to get some organic matter into the soil".

All he is saying is that his family didn't have the right people in the right places to make the right decisions at the time.

Doesn't he say that the heirloom plants saved the farm for 15 years?

I'm not that familiar with california agriculture to know if the crops he mentions are heirloom or not. However, the 15 years specifically mentions small scale ag which during the 80's made a lot more sense than it does today.

You could be right about the heirlooms.

Victor Davis Hanson, through hard work and luck, has parlayed his Stanford Classics PhD into a successful career as classicist, military historian, columnist, and conservative pundit. I just finished A War Like no Other http://www.amazon.com/War-Like-Other-Athenians-Peloponnesian... which I recommend, but I don't think it's odd for him to write this. Even with hard work most folks with liberal arts degrees won't see much success in liberal arts endeavors, but more specifically I think he was referring to farming, which is a side hobby for him and liberal arts degrees in his family did not contribute to success with the family homestead.

Yeah, I think it's that farms are now a real business and not a side business, and there's enough science and business involved that if you're going to be a farmer and compete against professional farmers, you should do it as a profession, vs. just owning real estate.

A person who wants to own a farm but not be a professional farmer should probably lease the farm to a professional farmer (which is fairly common); what I'd personally like to do is own a timber estate, since that really is mostly passive for 30-50 years.

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