City Slicker Bloomberg: It’s Pasture Your Bedtime

There is precious little Uncle Joe Biden says you can agree with, however on Sunday’s Meet the Press, he was actually quite cogent when he pointed out that Bloomberg’s $60 billion can buy a lot of advertising, but it can’t erase your record.”

He’s already spent about $300 million on his campaign. He’s promised to spend up to $1 billion. He’s run ads during the Super Bowl. He’s saturating the airwaves in Super Tuesday states.

In November of 2016, Michael Bloomberg addressed the SaÏd Business School at the University of Oxford in Great Britain as part of their Distinguished Speaker Series.  Here’s what he told the audience:

Bloomberg on why farmers can’t work in information technology

MB: “I can teach anyone how to be a farmer 1 dig a hole 2 put a seed in 3 put dirt on top 4 add water 5 up comes the corn”

The skill 4information technology is completely different you need more grey matter#farmers pic.twitter.com/HM13tA6goz

— Pete (@PeterMentes) February 15, 2020

“It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that.”

How to be a Tech Thought Leader:

1. sit on stage chair
2. pin on lapel mic
3. cue assistant to flash powerpoint slide titled "Yada Yada: Machine Learning Technology?"
4. say "Yada yada, profound challenge of big data machine learning, yada yada"

*this one is not satire

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 17, 2020

In the 1930's, one farmer could feed four people. In the 1970's that number rose to 73 people. 

According to a published report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture  Modern farms and agricultural operations work far differently than those a few decades ago, primarily because of advancements in technology, including sensors, devices, machines, and information technology. Today’s agriculture routinely uses sophisticated technologies such as robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images, and GPS technology. These advanced devices and precision agriculture and robotic systems allow businesses to be more profitable, efficient, safer, and more environmentally friendly.

Now, a single farmer produces enough food to feed 155 people.

Agricultural land takes up 391 million acres—a fifth of the land in the 48 contiguous states—only 77.3 million of those acres are used to grow the food we eat, while 800 million acres go toward feeding cows and other livestock. That makes up 41% of the contiguous U.S. and is roughly equal to the size of India.

For comparison, the same study found that urban areas made up only 3.6% of the total size of the 48 contiguous states.

Farmers are the backbone of America. They are the men and women who work in the searing heat and bitter cold to put food on our tables and clothes on our backs. They rise with the sun to tend crops and stay up late to review accounts. They fight off invasive insects and battle unpredictable weather.

An acre of Kansas wheat produces enough bread to feed nearly 9,000 people a day.  Minnesota ranks first in the nation in production of sugar beets, sweet corn and green peas.  About 60% of Idaho’s potato crop is processed into French fries and tater tots.  A single steer can produce about 720 quarter-pounder burgers.  In Nebraska, the nation’s top producer of commercial red meat, cattle outnumber Nebraskans by nearly four to one.  If you like cherry pie, thank Utah which harvests 2 billion cherries a year.

Bacon and sausage are breakfast mainstays, but they wouldn’t be so readily available without dedicated pork producers in states like Iowa, the No. 1 pork producing and exporting state in the U.S.

In a statement on the video which has gone viral, Bloomberg campaign spokesman Stu Loeser accused Trump allies of taking the video out of context.

"The Trump team cut off the first part of Mike's sentence where he said 'if you think about the agrarian society [that] lasted 3000 years, we could teach processes,'" he said. "Mike wasn't talking about today's farmers at all, and Team Trump is deliberately misleading Americans because Donald Trump’s erratic policies have devastated American farms, including a 20% increase in U.S. farm bankruptcies last year."

The Bloomberg campaign statement, however, does not mention he was talking about educating modern farmers for a modern economy in the video and does not address his comment on farmers and factory workers needing more "gray matter" to do jobs in the information economy.

Rep. Fred Keller (R-PA), who represents a very large, rural district with over 10,500 farms, condemned Bloomberg's comments in a Monday morning statement.

"I bet Mike Bloomberg could not even change a tire on his car, let alone deal with the myriad of issues farmers deal with on a daily basis. Bloomberg's comments about the intelligence of farmers are ignorant, derogatory, and small-minded," Keller said. "Unlike Mike Bloomberg, President Donald Trump has stood up for Pennsylvania's farmers and hardworking individuals across our nation. Thanks to President Trump's Administration, 17,000 Pennsylvania agricultural jobs will benefit as a result of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and better trade deals with countries like China."

I wish someone would corner this mental midget (pun intended), lock him in a room and run the following video on an endless loop until he whimpers uncontrollably.