There's a big difference between being in a field versus working in a field, from dawn to dusk, every day, regardless of the weather or sickness, in order to produce just enough food to feed you and your family, knowing that a single failed harvest (due to conditions like weather and pests that you have no control over) will leave you starving, watching helplessly as your children, spouse, friends and neighbours slowly weaken and die, knowing that even if you survive, you will face the same thing again the next year, and the next, for the rest of your lives, which will likely be short, due to the constant, exhausting labour, frequent bouts of malnutrition, and nonexistent medical care.

This is just unrealistic day dreaming. You can go be in a field picking produce for work - we have a shortage of these laborers. Most people don’t actually want to do that, they want a cushy office job that doesn’t wear down their body and that offers them the ability to increase their skill and value over time.

The software engineer who thinks they’d be happier working in a field is largely just a grass is always greener phenomenon. It turns out that for most people, they don’t like work whatever it is, because work is done not by choice but by necessity.

No one is stopping you, and maybe it's worth trying out!

Have you ever tried it? I did, and sure as hell wouldn't.

Nobody's really stopping you from studying agriculture and working in that proverbial field either.