My Experience as a Rice Farmer
by surprisetalk on 4/2/2026, 1:53:55 PM
https://xd009642.github.io/2026/04/01/My-Experience-as-a-Rice-Farmer.html
Comments
by: aurareturn
As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city.<p>Some things I remember:<p>* Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields<p>* Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields<p>* Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest<p>* The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again and it's very comforting.<p>Now I work in high tech, working on AI, and the fancy stuff. There is just something about rice fields that I love - maybe just memories, childhood, smell, how serene it looks when it's full.<p>My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable more people in cities to migrate back to rural places. When I was younger, I used envy those who grew up privileged in a big modern city. Nowadays, I absolutely am glad I grew up in a little village in a farming community and I consider myself lucky to have.
4/7/2026, 7:22:55 AM
by: black3r
I hear sentiments about farming from lots of burnout software developers.<p>I always wonder what made them become developers at all. Cause my primary motivation for selecting a job was that I explicitly didn't want to ever work manually, I knew that since early childhood and it still didn't change even after 2 burnouts. My secondary motivation was that I liked working with machinery/computers.<p>Also when I started coding, it immediately felt like my passion. And the thing I love most about coding is that mostly all changes I make have instantly visible results. I couldn't imagine working a job where I had to plant a seed and then wait a week to see if it sprouts.<p>Also what I love about development is that with modern Docker/Kubernetes setups you can make the environment where your code runs pretty predictable. And with proper backups configured and backup restore testing you aren't really worried about losing the stuff you worked on for months. Meanwhile while farming you can't predict how much sun is gonna shine or how much rain you're gonna get. And you can't prepare for natural disasters which can come anytime and ruin your crops.<p>So I wonder if it's all just people who never loved software engineering and just went into it for money, and now that they have money after years of working they start looking for their true passion.
4/7/2026, 10:20:34 AM
by: aledevv
<i>> Doing a day of manual labour, chatting shit, then going for the onsen and some BBQ and beers is far better than grinding away at some enterprise SaaS that will probably disappear in a few years.</i><p>I particularly agree with this statement.<p>I don't know why <i>manual</i> work has been so denigrated over the last century. We believed that office labor was more important and healthier than manual labor. I don't think so.<p>As a developer, sitting all day typing in a stuffy office, without natural light, without sun, without air, is certainly no healthier than being outdoors, connecting with nature and other people. We come from nature and are made to be active, outdoors, and in the sunlight.<p>Today, with AI, many white-collar jobs are being called into question, and perhaps we can go back to loving certain traditional jobs.
4/7/2026, 8:56:34 AM
by: magicbuzz
As someone producing food, it’s pretty much a given that something in nature will seek to consume what you are producing. I was waiting for it, and in this case, wild boar.
4/7/2026, 7:27:05 AM
by: TrackerFF
It is probably a nice experience to have, but imagine your body after doing this for 50-60 years. You're one serious back injury away from being unemployed.
4/7/2026, 7:46:57 AM
by: elwray
I and my wife live in the city for work. While most people flock to the city and settle there as an upgraded life, we always felt empty here. Our dream is to buy a piece of land at our village and come back to our roots. I dont enjoy farming that much but my wife does. I however like the bliss of living close to nature. There is a river that flows nearby and taking a dip in that fills me with so much joy that I could never find anywhere in the city.
4/7/2026, 8:09:38 AM
by: TurdF3rguson
That suitcase of rice story though, I'm finding it problematic lol.<p>- First of all a 95% increase in the price of rice means it less than doubled which is no big deal.<p>- I think maybe you meant it 20x'ed ? If so I will just eat corn until it comes down (my house eats 100kg of rice in a month)<p>- Can a suitcase of rice even get through customs?
4/7/2026, 7:27:20 AM
by: metalman
I was prepared to be dissapointed, but I am not. Honest, simple, carrys that sense of work is good and doing what needs to be done is enough and that you are just another critter.
4/7/2026, 8:16:38 AM
by: anonymous908213
This was mostly a nice read, I do enjoy these kinds of slice-of-life blogs. I think it might have been a bit better without making claims about the economic future and history of rice farming or whatever, if the author doesn't even speak the language it's unlikely they have any real insight to offer and whatever shallow information they got off a random Youtube video is liable to be spreading misinformation that misleads uninformed readers than being actually informative. Farming a rice field does not a rice economist make.<p>There is one particularly funny point I'd quibble on:<p>> This was part of a system to discourage communism initially by encouraging ownership of business and preventing absentee landlords accumulating large tracts of land where people who work the fields would be forced into renting.<p>I'm dubious about the credibility of this assertion, but it is amusing to think that the goal would be to "discourage communism" by a policy that is essentially communistic in nature, in the true definition of the economic system (ownership of the means of production, ie. you own your own labour rather than renting it out).<p>I am, of course, nitpicking. It's rather easier for me to write comments complaining about things than praising them at length, but I was entertained by the view into the author's experiences and anecdotes.
4/7/2026, 6:49:56 AM
by: firekey_browser
[dead]
4/7/2026, 8:43:34 AM
by: statedin
You are a absolutely right the coming generation would have no idea about the carming, or wouldnlack to see the real process
4/7/2026, 7:29:34 AM