If I grew up in a family of farmers, I think I would be way more interested in tourism than keeping family tradition. No hate to my family, but I think we can all agree I’m not a farmer. Part of that comes from the long days and the other part comes from all the hard work that farmers do every single day. They are up before everyone else and go to bed after everyone. Thank goodness I wasn’t because that would be a hard decision for me! I think I would feel partially guilty if I didn’t keep up a family tradition, but at the same time farming is very high maintenance with long hours each day.
As mentioned in the pineapple tour today, farmers can plant up to 8,000 pineapple plants in 1 day. To me, that sounds like the absolute last thing I would want to do. That is very hard labor and very time consuming as well. The pineapple plantation has around 42,000 plants in 1 acre. That doesn’t appeal me at all, and I don’t believe it does to my generation too. It sounds like a very big piece of land with many plants that need cared for every single day. If that was me in those shoes, I would 100% want to go into more of a tourism aspect.
I think another big thing that goes into this is when you’re a farmer, you don’t have a dependable income. Your income is based on selling crops, and if something happens to your crops, you won’t make money. Diseases can be spread and that can impact you tremendously. A really big thing in this upcoming generations is making lots and lots of money, being able to afford anything you want with short business days and lots of free time, and if you’re a farmer you are not guaranteed that money or extra time due to diseases, droughts, floods, natural disasters, the time it takes to care for a crop etc.
I think there can be multiple big risks due to this epidemic. If enough people fall into this trap, that could cause serious issues for crops and even our food supply. If we don’t have enough farmers, prices will rise for crops because these plants will become scarce. This also can cause food shortages and can cause less food security. If there is no food security people will struggle to find or get food, on top of the higher prices and shortages. Many Americans do not have this kind of money to be spending, so it can be detrimental to the economy and country. Overall, I think I can feel the shift happening in my generation, and it does scare me for the future.