Same as ever.

Prime Future 185: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

Maybe it's because I am a history nerd at heart but I really believe the best way to understand what the future could look like is to understand what did happen in the past.

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Tim Hammerich, host of the Future of Agriculture podcast, has been creating some ‘history of agriculture’ episodes, mostly about people I've never heard of who profoundly shaped some part of the ag industry as we know it. Tim recently read one of my favorite books, Cattle Kingdom, and let me join him on the podcast to talk about our takeaways.

Today I want to share a few of those takeaways and dive into a question I'd been wanting to explore since I was at the OKC Stockyards last winter.

Also, I've just finished reading Morgan Housel's new book "Same as Ever", which is literally an entire book written by a finance guy about something that does not change over time: human psychology.

Morgan highlights many nuanced human tendencies that affect all things finance & business, including the ways humans behave when you dangle a 10x arbitrage opportunity in front of them and convince them it's risk-free to pursue.

We'll talk more about some key ideas from that book in upcoming editions, because this year I want to also explore what is NOT likely to change in 5, 10, 50 years about animal protein.

Trust me, it's all connected🙂

First, here's a quick overview of what happened between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century: