this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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Is it true that farming isn't physically demanding anymore? I figured it's easier now physically, but you'll still develop strength from the things that can't be done with machinery.
My impression is that it is definitely not as demanding as when you were plowing feilds with a team of oxen... but it is still physicall demanding. Sure, machinaty automates a lot, but that just means you are more productive and end up doing more of the labor the machine doesn't automate. Also from what I've heard, a lot of the work of modern farming is fixing and maintaining the machines that do the heavy lifting - which is also fairly taxing physical labor.
AND you need to be a hacker!
https://tractorhacking.github.io/
Depending on the type of farming, the thing that can't be done by machinery can get ridiculously small. To my knowledge, to grow cereal for example, intensive and repetitive efforts are not needed if you have access to machines. You still have to be physically capable but i wouldnt say it's physically demanding.
Depends on the farm. In NA, if you're running a farm > 5000ac, you're probably making enough money and are busy enough managing the finances and schedules to get new equipment often enough that you don't have to fix much, or you can afford a mechanic. Things still need to be greased, and I'd challenge most of the desk jockeys here to slide under a seeder and grease and inspect 80-100 shanks every morning for 3 weeks and not complain about it. That's the job of the guy behind the wheel, usually, because they're the one to fix it in the field if it wasn't installed right. And while you're out there, shit breaks. You can shut everything down and wait for a mechanic, or you can get your ass under there and unplug the opener or replace the boots/hose.
Small farms, which today is a farm under 5k and is by far the larger amount of farms, you get to do all that yourself, and your equipment might be 30 or 40 years old, so you're fixing it a lot. You still have to be able to lift a 100lb part into your machine or implement rather than fuck around going to get another tractor to lift it in, or it just isn't going to fit where you need to lift. So you better have some upper body strength or some young prick to do it for you.
Yah, when everything is working and the GPS is engaged, all you have to do is watch for things wrong and eat the lunch you packed yourself to last all day in the first hour.
Nice, thanks for the insight!
Afaik it's mostly medium-large fruits that still get harvested by hand. I knew a Norwegian guy who developed the ideal bodybuilder physique just from picking apples for a few seasons.
I don't know much about this, but I've seen a bunch of videos of apple harvesting machines doing their thing. Just search for "apple harvester" and you'll see a zillion videos
Maybe someone's finally solved it over the past few years, but he was telling me that automating apple harvests was still a massive challenge about 5 years ago - there are/were machines to pick up fallen apples and robots for picking them individually, but you can't easily shake all the apples off a mature tree for collection and a human can pick them from the branch far more quickly than a robot. From what I can see online there's one that does it for young trees, but most of them are still glorified cherry-pickers.
Also those machines are expensive, and use fuel. The break even point if switching to a machine could be many years.
I work at a farm currently, today I spend a few hours picking rocks off a field after new soil had been spread there.
While most of the farming itself is done by machines, there's a lot of maintenance stuff that needs to be done by hand.
Oh thanks for your insight. I feel the work "rocks" is doing some heavy lifting. I imagine they can be pretty large?
Something you can fairly easily lift with both hands. For larger ones we use a tractor and bucket, but for smaller ones it's just more efficient to throw them in the bucket by hand.
Corporate farms, typically not. Independent smaller farmers it is.