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I would wager that if you took 10,000 random "elites" and 10,000 random "red tribe" people, the eilte person who best understands food production in this set would understand it better than the normal "red tribe" person who understands food production best out of their set.
The knowledge isn't missing on the elite end (I recently watched a talk by a foremost agricultural plant scientist who was very very clearly "blue tribe elite" and she would wipe the floor with any mere farmer), it's just more concentrated in certain people.
When push comes to shove and the blue tribe needs to make food production safer, healthier and more efficient, it will just reallocate its priorities slightly (by e.g. producting more blue tribe plant scientists at the expense of art historians) without needing to become more "conservative" in any way.
I don't think you're completely wrong here, but in my experience in engineering, there is a fundamental, but useful distinction between the guys with the degrees running simulations and making designs and the technicians (frequently with at most a two-year degree) that actually build things and put them together.
This isn't to discount your plant scientists, but they probably won't even think about out-of-specialty things like booking crop dusters and beekeepers six months in advance, or maintaining good relations with the migrant farmworkers that actually pick your apples (agriculture isn't my wheelhouse, so maybe these aren't the best examples.)
Really, I've come to believe that our systems work better when both types work together, and while we probably overvalue the ivory tower types overall (and I say that as one), lots of 20th century attempts to "put the working class (alone) in charge" turned out pretty poorly.
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