"There are a lot of jobs that people do that I don't particularly want to do " and you've made a good list of them. But for me farm worker definitely ranks among them and it didn't take me very long doing that to conclude (1) it's not a way I want to live and (2) it doesn't seem to sensible to live off of other people living that way. So, small farms - yes, small down to the size of gardens, I say. But we need to bring up the issue of social security. Without some form of centralized social security it's every family for itself and the larger the family, the better the chance of making it in old age. I've read of and figured out many versions of Utopia but without addressing the population question they all crash. To those who claim that unfair distribution is the real problem, the reply is (1) fairer distribution is not about to happen and (2) if it did it would be a temporary solution.

My daughter lives on a commune/farm in W Va. They have goats, various fowl, a few cows, horses, and a large garden with plenty of room to expand. Recently they've taken up canning. The live very comfortably, but use a teeny fraction of the resources the same number of people in suburbia would use. Although, they are not self-sufficient, they are positioned to get a lot closer to it.

When I think of farm labor, I think of the way they live on this commune. One doesn't have to be simply a low-wage farm hand. I think it's far better, far more fun to a member of some kind of collective where farming is but one of your labors, and where you participate in deciding how to make it work.

As far hard work, I was a truck driver for 11 years, til I was 36, long, long ago. Hard, hard work loading and unloading box cars, loading my truck, running around three states delivering office furniture, carrying desks up flights of stairs, duking it out with other drivers who jumped the line at the packing houses on the waterfront in NYC, and so forth. Some of the best years of working life. Hard physical work is not to be afraid of, especially if you have some control of it and if you can lighten it up as you get older.

None of this matters, however. There's not going to be any choice about it. It's the future. It doesn't matter how much anyone hates it. The adjustment is going to have to be made. The era when everyone could sell real estate, process claims, design web pages or just walk around a warehouse guarding against "terrorists" is rapidly coming to a close. And its not a matter of re-industrializing either. That too cannot happen on a major scale. One way or another it's back to the land and small industry connected with it. People don't like biking or walking too much either. SO SORRY!

BTW, I'm a total city-slicker (although I walk everywhere, except to get out of the city to go hiking). But I know this ain't future. I used to hate visiting my grandfather's farm as a kid, getting up in the middle of the nite, like 5 or whatever, listening to some idiot fowl howling. But my daughter's commune/farm plus the recognition of necessity has changed my mind. Trouble is, I'm at the age now where all I'll be able to contribute is fertilizer, one way or another.

Ah yes, upthread there was talk of night-soil. What about buckets? Carry it out to the fields. That's what they used to do in China, probably still do.

With respect to the intelligence required for good food growing practices, it is interesting to note that Adam Smith, who wrote in a time when all farming was organic, was extremely impressed with the intelligence and skill of farmers and farm laborers:

After what are called the fine arts, and the liberal professions, however, there is perhaps no trade which requires so great a variety of knowledge and experience. The innumerable volumes which have been written upon it in all languages, may satisfy us, that among the wisest and most learned nations, it has never been regarded as a matter very easily understood. And from all those volumes we shall in vain attempt to collect that knowledge of its various and complicated operations, which is commonly possessed even by the common farmer;

Not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the operations of husbandry, but many inferior branches of country labour, require much more skill and experience than the greater part of mechanic trades.

The common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse than the mechanic who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth and more difficult to be understood by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however, being accustomed to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other, whose whole attention from morning till night is commonly occupied in performing one or two very simple operations. How much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse much with both.