Yeah, I don't know why you think farmers are "smart" (taking this meaning to convey that we shouldn't question their practices). If you pump enough water and fertilizer into the already-fertile land you can get things to grow. Wow. If farmers were actually smart they'd start thinking long term on how their practices are destroying their livelihood (draining aquifers, polluting rivers, degrading soil quality) or how their politics are driving future generations from rural US (anti education, anti immigration, anti everything). Credentials: grew up in rural midwest.
It looks easy until you face pests, diseases, soil nutrient deficiencies, drought, unfavourable market conditions leading to losses etc. And it's a low margin business so you need to do everything with maximum efficiency to stay ahead.
A programming analogy: Anyone can write an hello world program in Python after a 10 minute tutorial, but delivering software that you can make a living from is much harder.
