It is technology...... pure and simple....IMO....
We depend on more and more technology and less and less people in the food production....
Hogs and cattle go to market and get transferred ......right on schedule.... no delays for the super cold or the blizzard.
Poultry and hogs are total confinement where everything is automatic controls.... if a feed auger stops or a humidity sensor rusts out the occasional human finds caucuses. Feedlots out here have seldom enough ingredients for the feed mill for more than a few days. Yet if you want to bring tomorrows load today they don't want it. Most have prescious few bushels in storage. There are lots that are just hand to mouth. All of agriculture now runs that way. If you want something with a jumping deer on it, better plan ahead because they have delays because the "just in time" process means orders are delayed waiting on parts.
Go to the big feed mill at optima, okla, just up from that bridge over the Beaver. Gotta be the most inefficient, slowest mill ever constructed.... sometimes 20 trucks or more sitting for hours.... and they may reject you just at the point of getting to dump and always after a long wait. Or you get to go in and spend an hour after waiting for 3 hours dumping into a very new mill.... Lots of what we do with these big conglomerates is terribly inefficient yet I am always baffled that the products they produce stay very cheap in the store.
But the point is we are not very hands on these days. Sprinklers have telemetry so many pumps and motors get checked once a week or every other day. Technology is everywhere and we depend on it more and more.... so the wreck that happens when weather or a raccoon bring you lemons,,,, is now a much bigger wreck than someone was at the helm all day. Even if they were 12 year olds cleaning waterers after school... they found problems to report and wrecks were avoided. Now it is someone who doesn't want the blame or doesn't want to communicate.
How much financial loss can we stand to live an easy life. world wide....
