New book provides insight on the multiple eras of agriculture

(Rob Saik/supplied)

As many are aware, when it comes to reading material, it’s very difficult to find pieces that revolve around agriculture — let alone, books that shed a positive light on the industry. So when these type of books do get released, we get very excited!

The latest release is by a familiar name to agriculture, Rob Saik. RealAg Radio host Shaun Haney, being the book fanatic that he is, had a conversation with Saik to discuss his August 13th release.

“Food 5.0 is designed to catch the readers attention. The book was actually written for an audience, and it flies directly in the face of a lot of food religion books that are on the shelf,” Saik explains. “It takes the reader through the five iterations of agriculture. Them being the era of muscle, era year of the machine, the era of chemistry, the era of biodiversity, and the fifth era — which we are in right now — the era of convergence, or technology convergence on the farm.”

Agriculture is an everchanging industry, which is why Saik felt he should separate each era. The era he says we are in now, the technology convergence era, is often seen as a darker, and as Haney points out, less romanticized era.

“Farming today is not your grandpa’s farm. If that image of what you have as a farm is a small little red barn, a round fendered pick-up truck, or a farmer in bib-overalls, you’re watching the history channel. So what I tried to do in the book is to connect the reader to what I call farms of consequence. That means these farms actually make a living,” Saik emphasizes.

“You know we hear the stat that two per cent of North Americans are farmers — well that might be the case on income tax, but when you consider farms of consequence it’s more likely point two per cent, and nobody tells the story of these modern farmers. What they’re doing, and how they’re producing food that the consumer is so disconnected from agriculture right now.”

Check out the conversation between RealAg Radio host, Shaun Haney, and author, Rob Saik, in the video below.

 

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