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 ...
Fabricated BS. This is pure show. Oxen require far more feed and care than a tractor and their feed and care is 365 not just when you fire them up.
There are metrics in agriculture for dollar value, BTU-value, water value and HP per commodity produced.
Run the numbers, but generally speaking all of those products are translatable to a BTU-dollar.
If a tractor costs more to operate with higher fuel prices, so does the cost bringing water to the oxen.
Solar and alternative power systems are notoriously inefficient compared with petroleum fuels. Without subsidies, those systems are not economical to initially install and still are inadequate to sustain including demolition and replacement costs.
Economies of scale generally prevail.
Are you absolutely sure about that, or just having an Obama moment?
Now no more than gardeners!!!
“if enough battery power can be built into a small tractor, think of a Prius - enough solar panels could be used to recharge a small electric tractor”
Prius’es don’t have to pull plows embedded into the earth. Guess how far they would go if they did?
‘Nuff said ‘bout that....
I’d be careful with that position. For all I know you are a stout supporter of Israel, don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in your body, and may even, yourself be a Jew. But in most discourse which asserts that bankers were behind Marx and “launched communism” as you put it, “bankers” is code for “Jews”.
I think the old beardy-wierdy actually believed his own claptrap. His critique of capitalism had a certain plausibility back in the 1840’s and 1850’s that is lost when democratic polities (whether republican or constitutional-monarchical in form) begin mild regulation of business and legalized union activity, then lost completely when attempts to implement his ideas turned into bloodbaths and stock-options, pension plans, union bail-outs of companies and the like resulted in “workers” owning the “means of production” in the context of a capitalist economy.
How could this be duplicated with animals;
Hey Matt did you forget a sarc tag? If not could you tell me what kind of machine those horses are pulling?
What is that machine doing and what is it called?
Everything you asked is in the caption.
Go back to the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio where Maurice Strong gave the Keynote Address and stated that it was their responsibility to bring about the collapse of industrialized civilization because of our unsustainable consumption of the earths resources.
At that Conference, the UN introduced the tools to accomplish this goal: Convention on Biological Diversity/Agenda 21/Rio Declaration, signed by H.W.Bush - implemented by Ex. Order of Clinton.
DOT Sec. Ray LaHood announced recently that the DOT will no longer promote motorized transportation as a priority of the DOT.
The shutting in of our natural resources including placing abundant fishery resources off limits are all part of the plan Maurice Strong and his UN cohorts un-veiled back in 1992 and has become the policy of the US govt. since, despite never being debated, discussed or approved by Congress.
Not one drop of fuel needed.
There is indeed an axis of evil, one consisting of radical Islam, Marxism, and militant environmentalism. They scored a victory in this case.
***Fabricated BS. This is pure show. Oxen require far more feed and care than a tractor and their feed and care is 365 not just when you fire them up.****
I will agree. Here is an antique tractor-animal powered web site everyone needs to look over.
http://www.smokstak.com/forum/
An 80 acre farm is third world.
An 80 acre farm is third world.
I wonder how many understand what it means to “sack” grain and how impractical that would be on today’s family farms where they are dealing with hundred of thousands of bushels per farm.
I wonder how many here understand the yield difference between that picture and now.
I wonder how many here on this thread have actually run a tractor or combine, picked rocks, or hauled small square bales or grain. Anyone who has - can tell who hasn’t...
Today’s farm production could not be matched using oxen or horses. It’s a practical impossibility, something that anyone near a modern farm operation would understand.
What
Nobody said that. It is just with the socialists running things we could go back to that if fuel got to 10.00 gal? Who knows, maybe we could feed ourselves just fine. Screw the rest of the world.
I would but they won't answer the phone.
From reading the thread there’s no way to help city people comprehend what a modern farm is like. You and I see it everyday - we know how absurd the idea is - that animals can replace machines without a loss of production. That picture in post 187 made me laugh - I really hope matt1234 was being sarcastic. How many teams would it take to replace the average combines you and I see every day during harvest??
That combine could be re-engineered with modern composites and aluminum. It isn’t that stupid. The way things are going.
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