Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commerical fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Experts created complex problems by splitting simple, integrated agricultural solutions into separate issues.
- In plain terms
- Farm experts made simple farming problems harder by splitting them up.
- What can you take from it?
- Avoid separating interconnected problems unnecessarily.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When is splitting a problem useful?
- How do we fix fragmented systems?
Another view
Specialization sometimes improves efficiency despite complexity.
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