Can we harvest insights for rice theory from two state farms in China?

Mid-20th century in the People's Republic of China was a turbulent period: wars, famines, and Cultural Revolution that disrupted lives for a decade and more. Amidst this historical context, two state farms, Lianhu and Qukou, were founded and developed. According to Talhelm and Dong (2024), Lianhu should be considered a rice farm and Qukou should be considered a wheat farm. Since the farmers in the two farms were mostly randomly assigned to work on these farms, this pair of farms is thus a rare natural experiment that allows a test of the causal relationship between farming practices and their cultural orientation: that farming rice leads people to become more collectivistic. But do these two farms really provide a clear causal test for the effect of farming practices? In this comment, we argue that the reported differences between farmers from the two farms show varying sensitivity to the specifics of the researchers' analytical decisions, creating challenges in interpreting the empirical evidence. Furthermore, the historical context of the two farms may have played an important role in shaping their cultural orientation, suggesting that differences observed across two farms could be attributed to factors other than their farming practices.