Great piece. Dan's views really resonate on the great potential for enhanced learning from much more engagement of farmers and farm trials in the research process. I'm developing the Agronomy Research Circle at www.thearc.farm exactly for this purpose. Sign-up and get involved if you are interested!
I appreciate the reflection on how R&D is shaped by incentives, especially in ag. When success is measured in yield or speed to market, we risk underfunding the deeper ecological innovations.
Really resonated with the idea that the real breakthroughs often emerge from long, boring years of foundational work. A good reminder that in ag, patience is part of the product.
And yet, while most of the journey begins in in silica—high control, clean variables—I keep wondering:
At what point does precision stop illuminating and start occluding?
In Ledger to Loom, I’ve been exploring how models, frameworks, and interventions—even well-meaning ones—can quietly shift from understanding life to managing it. From simulation to field, each step offers less control, but perhaps more truth. And not just empirical truth—relational truth, contextual, soil-scented, weather-worn.
So I keep circling back to questions like:
What kind of intelligence do our models filter out?
What do field conditions say that code can’t?
And when we scale, are we scaling insight—or just control?
These questions keep opening unexpected doors.
If they stir anything on your end too, perhaps there’s something worth exploring.
Super interesting to think about, Ali! In my personal experience in innovation in agriculture, the field is where ideas live or die. Getting ideas outside into a field and into the hands of farmers has quickly shown me time and again how many unknown variables there are and all the things I hadn't yet considered.
I imagine in other domains that are less reliant on the physical, biological, weather-driven world, the in silica step can take you a lot further, but as for agriculture in 2025, there is plenty that only can be learned from trials in the field!
Great piece. Dan's views really resonate on the great potential for enhanced learning from much more engagement of farmers and farm trials in the research process. I'm developing the Agronomy Research Circle at www.thearc.farm exactly for this purpose. Sign-up and get involved if you are interested!
Thank you Daniel! I’ll check it out!
I appreciate the reflection on how R&D is shaped by incentives, especially in ag. When success is measured in yield or speed to market, we risk underfunding the deeper ecological innovations.
Really resonated with the idea that the real breakthroughs often emerge from long, boring years of foundational work. A good reminder that in ag, patience is part of the product.
Thank you Eshan! I loved that example from Dan, too. A good reminder that human curiosity + time is a powerful combination!
100%. I couldn’t agree more.
And yet, while most of the journey begins in in silica—high control, clean variables—I keep wondering:
At what point does precision stop illuminating and start occluding?
In Ledger to Loom, I’ve been exploring how models, frameworks, and interventions—even well-meaning ones—can quietly shift from understanding life to managing it. From simulation to field, each step offers less control, but perhaps more truth. And not just empirical truth—relational truth, contextual, soil-scented, weather-worn.
So I keep circling back to questions like:
What kind of intelligence do our models filter out?
What do field conditions say that code can’t?
And when we scale, are we scaling insight—or just control?
These questions keep opening unexpected doors.
If they stir anything on your end too, perhaps there’s something worth exploring.
Super interesting to think about, Ali! In my personal experience in innovation in agriculture, the field is where ideas live or die. Getting ideas outside into a field and into the hands of farmers has quickly shown me time and again how many unknown variables there are and all the things I hadn't yet considered.
I imagine in other domains that are less reliant on the physical, biological, weather-driven world, the in silica step can take you a lot further, but as for agriculture in 2025, there is plenty that only can be learned from trials in the field!