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A lot of old testament stuff had to do with hygiene. Look at all the kosher rules regarding food. Deut. 22:9 also forbids growing mixed crops, which likely had to do with the chance of crossbreeds being infertile and the inability for Bronze/Iron Age tribes being able to replace seed stock quickly enough.
Or some priest or political leader took revenge against a pig farmer who slept with his daughter.
And the mixed crops this was more likely to make sure farmers are not self sufficient.
No. The seed thing is explicitly so the farmers could grow the same crop from year to year. If you grow a cucumber in the same plot as squash, the seeds from both will be a hybrid and not give you anything useful. Cucurbits are notoriously easy to hybridize and create useless offspring. The genetic mechanics wouldn't have been know, but you would still see the results. People needed to live in groups then and now. No farmer would ever be able to be completely self sufficient regardless, especially then.
I was thinking more along the lines of shellfish for a primarily desert people or the Rabbi being the defacto food inspector.
I would think that farmers were experienced and smart enough to know which crops would hybridize and which don't. They would not need the clergy to tell them that.
We don't see farmers today getting farming advice from the church. They get it from other farmers. I don't see any reason for it to be different back then.
I do see however that the church wanted to sound important and wise. So they wrote things down, but without having a full understanding, so a lot of the advice they wrote down is too simplistic.
We don’t see farmers today getting farming advice from the church. They get it from other farmers.
uh, they get it from the ag departments from their state/local universities. They didn't have universities back then.
Also, while most farmers probably knew not to do hybrids back then, the consequences of loosing an entire year's harvest of a stable crop would mean famine for the tribe. You can't just ask for half of a neighboring village's seed stock. It was important enough to make it a sin.