[Pops]

The one thing I've learned in my years blathering here, things are never as simple as I think. So on the one hand, I also thought animal traction and stoop labor would easily overtake mechanized production as oil production falls it just seemed logical to me. But now I understand (from personal experience) that making a small farm living in this world while transitioning to the next is tough and even just trying to be more self-reliant is a task that requires dedication.

The main factor is the cost of labor. I figure I make $3 or $4 an hour raising bottle calves, better this year, not so much in others. Until cube farmers have absolutely no option but to hire out as manual labor at $1 an hour, or less, the modern farm will continue as is simply because it is to efficient to change. And make no mistake, that efficiency will only rise as limits are reached, the luxury foods like lettuce are foregone and farmers scrape to survive. Efficiency will increase if for no other reason than investment will necessarily fall and so just like the major oil companies will seem to be increasingly profitable as they forego investment, farmers will forego new investment just before they go broke.

So the conundrum is that farmers are always under pressure to innovate and become more efficient, high oil prices just add to the pressure. Scale and efficiency they have achieved makes practicing a smaller and lower tech style harder and harder. So the separation between the local ag we all talk about and the reality of the market gets wider and wider.


by the way, walmart is pushing bigtime into organic foods to make their grocery stores more profitable. WM is now the largest grocer in the US but not very profitable doing it. So they hope to be able to add scale to organics and bring down the price so they can make more. Another niche lost.

--

Scrub, everybody's dad or granddad used to do this or that; 5 billion mouths ago.

[MikeinNeb]

When you look at center pivots for irrigation, would it be that big a deal to incorporate automated plowing, planting, combining, etc. using electric motors fed from a central power source? How about from a big wind turbine in the middle?...

[PrestonSturges]

Well it is handy that wind farms are out in the midwest.

[careinke]

Scrub Puller,

Seems you are not the only one innovating farm technology.

http://farmhack.net/tools

I think to many people think the current agricultural system is normal and or necessary. It's not, and cannot sustain itself.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . I have posted this link on various sites (including here) before. I don't know if any one ever looks, or if they look understand what they are seeing.

I see musings all over the net about the possibility of using the centre pivot principle to pull ploughs and implements.

It can and will be done . . . but not in my lifetime. The notion of circular rows is a step too far for the current generation of farmers.

http://www.maddelinternational.com/index.php?

Click on "products" then Circleworker

I can put up more information if any one is interested and any sensible questions can be dealt with on this discussion.

Several groups and individuals in various places around the world are working on the concept but I believe our system has many advantages over the low clearance models.

Cheers.

[Simon_R]

If we are not positing a complete collapse, then I would suggest that business as usual will continue for years, with bigger and more efficient farm equipment.
I believe there is a market for the smaller contractor.

In a collapse ... how are we making the tractor tyres, if steel, how are they getting to the farm.

I suspect that there is a cost benefit to specialising etc etc, however this is offset with the ever rising cost of kit and loans to purchase kit, the only question is, is there going to come a time when the cost of the kit/insurance/transport/loan repayments/maintenance and training outweigh the benefits, that will be an interesting day.

[MikeinNeb]

I am not thinking the pivot irrigation assembly takes the torque, the pivot irrigation assembly would carry the "extension cord" to an automated plow, planter, cultivator, combine, etc. The "farmer" would move it from unit to unit.

Simon, civilization, to remain "civilization", has got to still be able to make steel and such. Probably will still be made in Japan with their plutonium breeder reactors......

[Simon_R]

Hi Mike

Not sure about japan, but lets not derail this thread.

On a farm of 1000 acres, that's a huge capital expense, and seems quite a lot of work to move from field to field (how big is this sweep).
Whereas a honking great tractor plonked on the field could plough this for a relatively small amount (even assuming more expensive fuel)

For the smaller farmer, would the capital expense be justified ?

as the Torque required is rather large, then presumably they would need to upgrade to 3 phase and much beefier cables, all of which cost.

I like the idea, but not sure of the scalability (this is always the Achilles heel in my hare-brained schemes)

[Pops]

In the past couple hundred years of modern farming, the problems for the farmer usually came with oversupply. Over supply doesn't necessarily mean that there is more food than people want, usually it means there is more food than people can afford. My great grandpa was a rancher and went broke in the depression not because he couldn't raise beef but because he couldn't sell 'em - if you look at photos from the time it's obvious most people weren't overfed.

As much as we hate economics, overlooking it is where these discussions sometimes go off the mark. Sure, the US could produce 5 billion gallons of biodiesel if we used every soybean but could we afford the cost? Even if we used "only" 10% of the crop for traction, that 10% comes from somewhere and increases the price (then of course there is drying, transport, processing, methanol production and manufacturing v-belts for the combine a/c).

As we've seen with fracking; shortage makes prices increase which can increase supply; but at the same time, higher price reduces demand. If the net result is lower profit then investment fails and production ultimately falls. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it will happen if it is not profitable. There are lots of possibilities, up to (or "down to" if you prefer) returning to stoop labor.

But the real question is, which one will be profitable? Even farmers gotta eat.

[KaiserJeep]

My earliest memories of my Grandfather's dairy farm are from before he got electricity in the 1950's. He never had any utility except electric power. No telephone, no city water, no sewer. The rest of the state was electrified in the 1930's, but after getting married he cleared the top of a mountain to start his farm, and waited for electricity for 22 years in that remote location - my Mother married and left home, never having had electric light. Electricity did not mean much except a bare bulb dangling from a pair of twisted, fabric-covered wires. They had a spring house instead of a refrigerator, and heated and cooked with wood. The biggest luxury of their lives was the electric fan that made Summer nights bearable. A similar luxury was replacing the kitchen woodstove with a gas range, allowing indoor cooking in the Summer. It was run off a huge tank of Butane gas in the side yard.

He did have 13 children, 11 of which lived, my Mother being the oldest. He had his cows and his draft horses and mules. Later in life he had one old pickup - actually a series of old pickups, and one very used and cranky Farmall tractor. He preferred to plow with horses or mules, because he bought food first and gasoline second. He sold his milk for cash money - never very much, because he had dirt floors in his barns, and thus was only ever given a Class "C" sanitation certificate, meaning his milk could only be used in cheese and other dairy by-products, and never drank - except by family members.

His 13 children and countless grandchildren were his labor force. He cultivated a couple of acres of vegetables, had fruit trees, and pretty much was a "subsistance" farmer. They paid cash money for bulk rice and sugar - grew sugar beets for molasses - raised chickens and hogs for meat and eggs - canned fruit and vegetables for the Winter, and everything from shoes to clothing homemade from feed sacks was passed down from kid to kid.

My Grandparents were "progressive", and proud of it. Which meant that they allowed the children to fill their plates first, before the adults. This at a time when in most families, the kids were only permitted to scavenge the remains of food after the adults had their fill.

They were grindingly poor, with no medical or dental care, and only had vitamins because the state was distributing them in rural areas. They probably lived closer to the off-the-grid, agrarian lifestyle that many here aspire to, than modern folks who are trying.

It's not any form of lifestyle that interests me. The socially beneficial aspects of such a lifestyle are available in small and medium sized towns, without the backbreaking labor, the chillingly high infant mortality, and the famines that will accompany crop blights without government support.

I think I've had a closer look at the post PO lifestyle than most of you, with my experiences in the 1950's. My description of "HOW IS AGRICULTURE GOING TO WORK?" is: Mostly, it won't. I believe that without cheap oil, we will struggle to grow and distribute enough food for the cities and suburbs. I don't think most of us will have jobs. Some of us will starve, mostly in the cities.

The Golden Age is ending. How many Americans even realized that they were living in the wealthiest country there ever was, in the time of the greatest prosperity there will ever be?

[MikeinNeb]

"KJ", you point out the reality that the vast majority of people in this country don't get; We have lived in the most blessed period, in the most blessed country, that has ever occurred and existed on this planet. 300 years of free land and the most resources on the planet. Coal timber, water....We even had our own Saudi Arabia (i.e. Texas) And we've used it all up and created a mindset that it was all because of "us", rather than God's unique gift to those privileged to exist here.

You describe life in a 3rd world country. A life that a majority of the world's population see every day. There lives aren't gonna change much over the next 100 years. It's the 1st world nations that will be backing down back toward their level, but with far more anarchy than those 3rd world countries ever see. Because our society is no longer geared to handle adversity or to struggle. There is someone to demand benefits from, someone to blame, someone else to be responsible to "fix" things.

I thin this discussion has clarified at least in my mind how "agriculture is gonna work". It's gonna be a barbell. The big tractors are gonna keep growing the high yield grains. But the land grown is gonna shrink. The energy intensive operations like the pivot irrigation in arid lands will disappear. And those farther from the rail lines will fade. Vegetables and fruits and meats and any other foods not conducive to industrial production will become much more expensive and gardens and small vegetable farming operations near cities will vastly increase. But the rest of the rural population will essentially disappear. There will not be any jobs in truly rural areas other than on the industrial farms.

[KaiserJeep]

That Third World country was rural Arkansas in the 1950's.

[Shaved Monkey]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIWsxo5nNgg
Lets not forget what happened in Cuba

[dashster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MikeinNeb', 'I') know we are going to have to transition to an electrified rail infrastructure for a civilized world to exist in a post-fossil fuel world. But how is agriculture going to work? Are we gonna go Amish? I can tell you first hand that horses are a huge pain to work with. Small tractors running on biodiesel maybe?

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shaved Monkey', 'h')ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIWsxo5nNgg
Lets not forget what happened in Cuba

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Scrub Puller', 'Y')air . . . as I have posted on this board (and others) I have spent many years developing a precision farming system that can be powered by the mains, solar panels, a small IC engine or draft animal/human power.

We have proven the system works, is scalable and useful versions could be made out of bamboo and bicycle wheels. Things are not tough enough yet for people to think outside the box an accept radical concepts . . . development of the system has ceased due to poor health and lack of funds.

Please don't nerp on with what I know to be bullshit about the future of farming and ignorant posts about planting corn by hand . . . I can make a corn planter that puts seeds in at a walking pace in one motion . . . very old technology.

Various groups and individuals around the world are working on rotary and cable cultivation systems that use a fraction of the horsepower of conventional agriculture.

Fifty years ago the Russians and Kiwis were running conventional and crawler tractors from the mains and back in England in about 1948 my grandad had an electric walk behind tractor in his market garden . . . I believe they were very common in Germany with thousands of small plots rigged up with overhead wires to support loops of power cable.

And while I'm ranting jump on Google earth and have a look at the terraces in Laos and Thailand . . . there are places in the world where nothing can/will out produce trained water buffalo and millions of pairs of little brown hands . . . agriculture will continue.

Cheers.

[vtsnowedin]

Hand labor works fine for one or two billion people on the planet but not for seven to nine billion. The answer that may well be forthcoming is a return to that one billion level of 1804. The oil age was well underway in 1927 when it hit two billion. How we get there is the worrisome problem.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'H')and labor works fine for one or two billion people on the planet but not for seven to nine billion. The answer that may well be forthcoming is a return to that one billion level of 1804. The oil age was well underway in 1927 when it hit two billion. How we get there is the worrisome problem.

[ralfy]

As mentioned earlier, we need to factor in population. Also, environmental damage.