Quoting Robin Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > A simple theory of farm economics says that farmers were mostly at a > subsistence level through most of human history, at least until > recently. I had always thought that horses were used in such subsistence > farming, but it has come to my attention that a horse weighs about ten > times as much as a human. It would seem that horses would eat about ten > times as much as a human, and so to be a part of the optimal mix of a > subsistence farm, they should be able to do more than ten times as much > work on a farm as a human. Now I'm sure horses are useful, but can they > really do more useful farm work, at least for certain important tasks, than > ten humans? Or is it just not true that horses are used in subsistence > farming?
One consideration is that although horses may eat 'about 10x' of what a human eats *calorically*, that food is to a large extent otherwise unavilable to humans (a small bit of grain is used, but also a LOT of forage). So their cost may not be as high as it might seem at first, especially if the horses are set to graze on otherwise unused or untillable land, such as in orchards, by streams, and such places. -- Susan Hogarth * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
