Thomas Edison, the Farmers, and AI
How to use AI if you can't afford a human assistant
Thomas Edison was an inventor who thought hard about what the value of currency was.
He wrote a pamphlet with his buddy Henry Ford.
I bought the book on eBay and in section 12 he wrote a doozy that while it’s English I’m not sure why it’s important.
(Of course, if I had a collectible 100 years print edition by Thomas Edison I wouldn’t be notating on it, but the previous owner apparently had no compunction for that.)
So some context…Edison felt that with the Federal Reserve coming into existence and rapid industrialization the farmer is getting left behind. Especially since he can’t control the weather and supply gluts both domestic and internationally.
And we must respect our farmers.
His idea was to store the grain if they so choose and get a credit of 50% of what is stored with the government. And I guess take that certificate and borrow against it.
But where to now?
AI. This is the power that never existed before. Who knows where they are getting the data but it’s not just from Reddit.
It helped explain this to me:
Suppose a farmer harvests wheat worth $100,000.
Deposits it in the warehouse.
Receives a receipt.
Borrows $50,000 against it.
Pays bills, workers, and next season’s expenses.
Waits six months.
He could, if a bank will loan him, borrow against the other 50% of the harvest
If wheat later rises to $130,000, the farmer sells:
Repays the $50,000 loan (plus fees).
Keeps the remaining value.
Without this system, the farmer might have been forced to sell immediately for only $100,000—or less if harvest-time prices were depressed.
Is there anything similar to this concept in play now?
Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) (1933-present)
During the Great Depression, Roosevelt created the Commodity Credit Corporation.
Instead of forcing farmers to sell after harvest:
government loans were made using crops as collateral
farmers stored grain
if prices improved they repaid the loan and sold
if prices collapsed, the government often took ownership of the commodity
It stabilized farm income for decades.
Many economists would say the CCC is the closest real-world implementation of ideas like the one in your book.
So the question is then why are farmers dying off still? If we looked out for them and no one wants to leave their family home?
Something to think about…
Or share with your fellow and lovely readers…
What happened to our farmers? I mean they founded the US.
For today’s setups and opportunities, read below