Posted on 05/15/2011 7:01:59 AM PDT by bkopto
When farmers Danielle and Matt Boerson realised they could no longer afford to run their tractors, they took the bull by the horns - and ditched them for oxen.
Soaring petrol prices had become so high that the couple, who run an 80-acre farm near Madison, Wisconsin, were forced to get rid of their two tractors, hay baler, plough and rotavator.
So they took a course at the agricultural institute in traditional farming techniques.
'It gave me the confidence that, yes, I could do this', Danielle told the Times. 'It just required a lot of concentration and a firm voice.' Their instructor was former peace core volunteer Dick Roosenberg, 64, who learned the trade while working for the UN in West Africa. He took the skills he had honed back to Michigan and set up Tillers International.
At first the company was aimed at helping Third World farmers harvest in the cheapest way possible.
On the side, he also helped historically-themed villages. But his specialist knowledge is now enjoying a new wave of interest with farmers from Wisconsin to Alaska now joining his courses.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
How do you know that’s ADM?
There are lots of private farms with that many combines.
A farmer with a less than 100 HP tractor cannot cut more than ten acres of hay in one day. A large round baler on a 100HP plus tractor can bale 400 acres in one day. Cutting, drying, and raking is done in lightning speed today as well.
You also forget that most sub soiling, and plowing, along with cultivating and harvesting is done round the clock. Solar is just that. You'd need lunar in equal demand.
How does the oxen farmer blow the haylage and silage into his silo? How does the farmer bag any crop in on the ground silage bags?
Anyone who buys into this crap is so ignorant of farming it's not funny. The Amish use machinery every day. They try to avoid it but they even run engine driven balers pulled by horses. The Amish are not stupid. They run tractors to cut hay, rake and bale it, fill their silos, and spread manure. They run combines to harvest corn and soy beans. They may hire those services out or for a crop share, but they are not dumb.
The next time you pass an Amish farm and see 100' X 20' silos, ask yourself how horses blow high moisture corn up that 100' pipe to blow the silo full?
Those mega farms are contracted by major corporations with fixed prices for the crop. Maybe I am wrong. Please correct me if I am.
Great. Just how much are they going to getintaxpayer subsidies to buy these things?
Probably true.
Still, technology only ever moves one direction.
At the moment, I have the ability to go to the store via solar power about once a day, and to heat up a can of soup.
Which is my earthquake backup plan. (I’m in quake country) The batteries are lead-acid which deteriorate quickly if deeply discharged - though the scooter won’t run then either, so that seems a wash. As I improve my capabilities I’ll upgrade to deep-cycle (marine) batteries, longer range and more effective vehicles.
Certainly though, in my opinion, there’s plenty of reason for smart, ambitious conservative American patriots to find alternatives to middle east oil.
Just saying.
:)
Maybe this is why Revelation has the Lord returning on horses. Obama etal are going to rid the entire world of machinery and modern ways of transport/living.
I read the excerpt, but the overwhelming stench of Marxist, Socialist, Leftist, Environmentalist propaganda put me off reading any further.
Yeah, but you’d never get anywhere.
Has anyone noticed that this story is BS?
I just hope the corn he’s growing is going to ethanol plant for an even more ironic effect.
That’s not really the point, the point is the machinery on private farms of 80 quarters cannot ever be replaced by oxen. Take a tour of a naverage multi thousand acre family farm in the midwest and you will understand how impossible the idea is. The day the world goes back to oxen to farm will be the day billions of people will be starving to death.
When enough people die farming with oxen will be practical again.
Perhaps the question should be, can machinery powered by imported oil from countries which support terrorists.
Be replaced by machinery powered by some other way?
Clearly going back to the 18th century isn’t the answer to anything.
Winner declared! Factual and Brief!
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“Farming with draft animals, while more time consuming, is VERY profitable. Ask the Amish about it.”
How can lower productivity result in a “VERY profitable” enterprise?
The only positive out of using animals is cost avoidance for tractors, fuel.
Cost avoidance offsetting lower productivity cannot result in “VERY profitable” farms.
I don’t believe it. Perhaps you could provide some numbers.
The majority of civilization in the US is however in the cities, small and large. They don't have enough land available to sustain the entire needs of their families. Instead, they go to the grocer to buy stuff. The stuff at the grocer is what the farmer has left over after he feeds his family, the extra that he has, to make a profit selling.
80 acres will not be sufficient to provide extra for a few more families, in any meaningful ratio of farmer to non farmer. The farmer thus needs more land, how much more?
Once you get in the several hundred and more, the ox simply cannot move fast enough to process the acreage.
An advantage of the tractor (there are many, as noted in other posts) is that it allows one person to physically generate sufficient product to feed multitudes.
I suppose one can mandate every family to live on 80 acres with an ox, but that is altogether another line of debate.
This is a COS... show only, back to nature crap and all that stuff. If you can’t afford fuel you can’t afford the time.
We’ll flat starve to death if we have to go back to draft animals for farming.
Horses are the better alternative. A segment of the farm
community have been using horsepower for years.
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