"grow well" / "fare"

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

asahi.com/english/TKY201008180268.html
It’s not a green thumb or a knack for knowing how his crops will [color=red]fare that keeps farmer Hideaki Shinpuku smiling.

wvu.edu/~agexten/landrec/jud … miting.htm
Most crops will [color=green]grow well but the soil needs a lot of protection and care.

fare
[no obj] : to do something well or badly
:black_small_square: How did you fare [=do] on your exam?
:black_small_square: The team hasn’t fared [=done] well in recent weeks.

Do [color=red]fare and [color=green]grow well mean exactly the same thing?

2

No, they don’t mean exactly the same thing. To “fare well” just means to do well, either in a task, one’s maturity or in a career. It’s where we get the word “welfare”.

– “His music career was not successful in the United States, but he fared much better in Japan.” (True story of one of my sister’s classmates.)
– “The new law didn’t fare well with the public, so the legislature quickly repealed it.”

To “grow well” means literally to grow well. We use it about things that grow. We can say that plants aren’t doing well, faring well or growing well, but only “grow” really means grow.

I have seen an American book called “From Welfare to Faring Well”. You could translate it from English into English as “From Public Assistance to Prosperity”. It’s about a man who started adulthood depending on free money from the government, but he started to rely on himself and got rich.

3

Thank you, Jamie.

Does “crops fare well” mean “crops do well”? It doesn’t make sense to me.

oxfordadvancedlearnersdictio … ary/fare_2
fare
[intransitive] fare well, badly, better, etc. to be successful/unsuccessful in a particular situation

  • The party fared very badly in the last election.
  • The North, by and large, has fared better than most regions in avoiding high unemployment figures.

macmillandictionary.com/dict … sh/fare_12
fare
used for saying how well or how badly someone does something

  • We now have a much clearer picture of how schools are faring.
  • fare well/badly/better/worse etc: The party didn’t fare as well in the local elections.

ldoceonline.com/dictionary/fare_2
fare
fare well/badly/better etc
to be successful, unsuccessful etc:

  • Although Chicago has fared better than some cities, unemployment remains a problem.
  • He wondered how Ed had fared in the interview.
4
5

Yes, it does.
Now that I have read Jamie’s explanation, this is how I understand it:

Crops/plants fare well – they develop sufficiently; they bear/produce fruit; the amount of grain, fruit etc that is grown in one season is a large one (the harvest is very good) and the quality of the fruit, grain, flowers etc is good.

All that as opposed to:

Crops/plants fare badly – they develop insufficiently; the amount of grain, fruit etc grown in one season is poor (the harvest is bad) and the quality of the grain, fruit etc is bad.

6

Tofu, when it comes to crops, growing is doing something. So if the crops are growing well, they’re doing something successfully, so they’re faring well. After all, growing is about all crops can do.

7

Hi Jamie,

Is there little difference?

8

Not enough to worry about.

9

Thank you, Jamie.