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Why collectivists grow rice and individualists grow wheat


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Why collectivists grow rice and individualists grow wheat

“Growing rice requires far greater cooperation: it is labour-intensive and requires complex irrigation systems spanning many different farms. Wheat farming, by contrast, takes about half the workforce and depends on rainfall rather than irrigation, meaning that farmers don’t need to collaborate with their neighbours and can focus on tending their own crops.

My gut reaction is this is a red-herring. The automotive industry, as well, the fairly well documented "I, Pencil" shows that many industries are interconnected in the specialization of specific functions and tasks required to bring together the "simple" writing implement, or the more complex assembly of an individual transportation unit.

From the standpoint of farming, one aspect disregarded is the implementations of the protection of property rights that make possible the reaping of the harvest after the other safeguards have been implemented to protect the crops from wildebeests that do not recognize the concept of individual rights.

While it is interesting that rice developed as an eastern crop while wheat thrived to the west, the interactivity between those growing rice is still a form of voluntary mutual consent.

In the case of pencils and automotive parts, the reliance on the particular suppliers is less prone to the 'accidental' geographic provision of irrigation. If this is the case and point of the more "collectivized" approach in growing rice, I can willingly cede it. The fact that the activity of irrigation for such a crop requires long-range planning bodes well for the need of thinkers to orchestrate it.

The fact that where rice has been demonstrated to be reared in areas where a more individualistic approach has been found t be conducive to profitable farming of the commodity and that collectivized communities have restricted its importation on this basis is telling.

It is here that the genealogy of rice-growing reaches an impasse. Where the conditions required for growing rice were not naturally occurring, the reward for the effort of understanding the causal relationships to a bountiful harvest was amply rewarded. Where the conditions required for growing rice occurred naturally, the more efficient method of production is viewed as an affront to the tribal traditions.

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