Why on Earth Is SpaceX Hiring a Farmer?

Maybe for potatoes on Mars, or maybe for the tax breaks
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 3, 2014 2:20 PM CST
Why on Earth Is SpaceX Hiring a Farmer?
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX (and Tesla Motors).   (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

As a company that hopes to rocket passengers into space and colonize other planets, you might expect SpaceX to run some unusual help-wanted ads from time to time. But a new one is definitely raising eyebrows: Elon Musk's company is looking for an experienced farmer in Texas. Applicants should have a "minimum of 10 years of row crop farming experience" and be handy with John Deere equipment, notes the Christian Science Monitor.

So what gives? SpaceX isn't saying, leading to speculation that the company hopes to send a farmer to space someday to sow seeds on an another planet. But Agriculture.com suspects the reason is far more mundane: tax breaks. It notes that SpaceX could get agriculture-use exemptions for both land and equipment. (That makes sense, given Musk's ability to extract cash out of state coffers.)

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