Agriculture and Tech Writing

[Ned Bedinger]

Dash Barron wrote:
> "Greetings. I'm new to the field of Tech Writing and I'm attempting to explore all possibilities."

>  
> So the current task of finding a 
 > related sphere stems from a challenge
 > posed to me, along with a mixture of
 > my own curiosity.

I am yet another list member with roots in agriculture, and I have a few 
thoughts for you that are probably much too long, but I don't have time 
to make them shorter :-)

What I have to offer is based on learning acquired when I attempted, ten 
or twenty years ago, after getting established in tech writing, to move 
to the country, and eat a lot of peaches.

I'm sure you're way ahead of anything I can offer in the way of advice 
about the technical aspects of agriculture, so I'll just underscore a 
couple of ideas, and maybe the perspective will add something to what 
you already know.

I don't have much depth in agriculture. Nearly all of my forebearers 
were farmers, but nearly all of them in the 20th century gave up farming 
to seek their fortunes in the cities, so while it is in my blood, I have 
grown precious little of my own food in my life. But I wanted to make a 
run at putting down farming roots, so I packed up the family and my 
portfolio and drove a long way, to reach a justifiably neglected patch 
of old worn out clay where some relatives once raised tobacco.

I wasn't completely naive about getting into this--I have other 
philosophical and practical roots in permaculture and appropriate 
technology. so I imagined then (and still think) that I could spend a 
few years (and then a few more) whipping the soil and the buildings into 
some sort of productive state. I planned to use the business references 
and tech writing and editing portfolio I'd built up during several years 
of working in the Seattle/Redmond market to help me land work in the 
academic/industrial high tech corridor that was conveniently close to 
where I was headed to farm.

I didn't look for tech writing work in the Ag sector, but I expect there 
are lots of opportunities for tech writers to work with manufacturers of 
agricultural tech. I say this because I discovered, while making a place 
for myself in the farming sector, that farmers today are a different 
breed from the farmers I sprung from (for example, the farm I was 
heading for had never had a tractor on the land. It had been mule 
powered). The modern farmers who were my nearest neighbors there were 
w-a-y more modern, and I don't say that because they drive around in 
air-conditioned tractors costing six figures.  They are sophisticated 
users of computers, they crunch data, they consult with experts, they 
think economically, and they have big investments in infrastructure and 
capital equipment.

And each tool, machine, attachment, chemical, seed, critter, and garment 
they buy, not to mention their programs and software packages, came with 
some form of documentation written by an agriculture-aware tech writer 
for a farmer. Everything, from the owner manual for a D9 Cat, to the 
proper care and feeding of pot-belly pigs, and on to the setup 
instructions for the software and hardware to connect a PC to dialup 
farmer-centric information services, gets touched by some variation on 
the technical writers.

So all you have to do is find any farmer tech company in your neck of 
the woods, and tslk your way into their tech writing department.

Otherwise, the training you will get in tech writing at school can serve 
you if you branch out to authoring academic papers or trade journal 
articles, which would probably make you a technical communicator, not a 
technical writer per se (peace y'all).

Agriculture is a shadow world for most of us city dwellers, but if you 
are intent on looking at agriculture head on, as a tech writer working 
in agriculture's information stream, I think you'll find that a lot of 
professional writing is required to support the mainstream farm-based 
lifestyle, with all of the info and knowledge dissemination that 
accompanies it.  But of course, there is still the commercial side of 
agriculture (marketing to farmers, marketing by farmers, sales, service, 
engineering,...), which is fertile ground, analogous to the types of 
work tech writers do in other fields.

Or you could pick one of the subcultures in agriculture (organic 
farming, animal husbandry, sylviculture, aquaculture, research and 
extension services, to name a few) and specialize.  These specialties 
require a constant supply of written material to push the latest ideas, 
science, business, and farm reports out to the farmers in the field. 
Those farmers are all studying ag techniques and strategies, looking for 
technical, technological, and innovative ways to stay on top of the 
natural risks that come with farming, whether driven by high tech or by 
getting back to nature.

Hope that helps you think about your opportunities a little :-)

Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith.com