Hello Bob
RE: "Harvest equipment = a scythe."
I grew up near Pennsylvania Dutch country, and I'll always remember
driving through the areas farmed by the Amish, which as many of you
may already know, eschew engine driven equipment. Unless they hire
someone to do fieldwork, they do the work generally by hand or with
horse drawn plows, wagons, etc. The food for the horses is
generally grown on the farm and of course the manure goes back on
the fields. The richness of their farms and fields was greater than
I recall seeing anywhere else. Amazingly, their culture and farming
practices continue to this day in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Maryland, Wisconsin, and elsewhere in the states.
I believe some list members have experience of this. Actually it's
just traditional sustainable farming. They call modern industrialised
farming "conventional", but in the long history of agriculture it's
not conventional, it's just a passing phase. It's what the Amish do
that's truly conventional, them and many others.
[According to my father, use of horse power was commonly used in
many Pennsylvania -- and I suspect in other states as well
-- farming communities up until perhaps WWII.]
I'm curious what list members might think of the ethics/morality of
using animal power, where practical, to grow and harvest crops.
As Todd says, the ethics and morality depend on the human component,
but use of animal traction can be and should be as well within
ethical bounds as any other farming work with animals can and should
be and often is. So let's talk about practicality rather.
(I realize that in less industrialized parts of the world, that's
not even a question.)
Replacing human muscle with animal traction is quite often the question.
In industrialised countries it's being found that sustainable
forestry might require teams of big horses, as of yore. Real forestry
doesn't seem to have survived on any scale much longer than real
horse-power did. The local economies, woodlands skills and
forest-product markets didn't survive either, but it could all be
revived, to everybody's benefit, IMHO. I think it will have to be,
like the farming. Not just "going back", in both cases it needs a
wise combination of old and new so that we can go forward. These are
the real modern farms and forests.
It seems far more sustainable, if done humanely and otherwise
ethically acceptable, to use horses, etc., to augment human muscle
power and to replace fossil fuel driven equipment. I should also
note that I'm well aware of the appeal of fossil fuel driven
equipment for "efficiency" and to ease the backbreaking labor of
more "traditional" agriculture.
I'm not so sure that it has to be backbreaking. The horse-drawn farm
implements developed in Europe and the US in the late 18th century up
to about WWII were excellent. I'm glad you put "efficiency" in
quotes. Is it more efficient to use less labour and more machines,
more fossil fuels, more fertilizer and more pesticides or to run a
low-input high-output mixed farm which uses animal traction wherever
possible, with the animals fed off the farm not out of an oildrum,
and feeding them helps refertilize the fields for the next crops, if
you manage it right. See Ley farming:
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html#ley
Small Farms Library
The best manure for the land is the owner's footprint
--Aristotle, Economics
Tractor manure makes a poor fertilizer, so use the tractor only when
you really need it.
We should regard grassland pasture as a sustainable green
carbon-neutral biofuel. It should be replacing fossil-fuel use in
agriculture, which is a major greenhouse-gas producer and
global-warming culprit and it needn't be.
Best wishes
Keith
Bob
on 7/13/05 4:20 PM, John Wilson at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi Mike,
> Extracting the oil from seed requires a process that is quite
> expensive. Harvest equipment you could probably contract out
> but unless you are somewhere where you can sell the cake or
> have livestock to feed the cake to an on site extractor I don't
> think would pay.
Nonsense. What "pays" and what doesn't depends largely on the
manipulated state of that day's market. Pressing oil from seed is
a very ancient and well-documented process. If you're planning to
turn it into biodiesel, the usual requirement of refining is to
some extent abbreviated. I encourage you to pursue this option.
Find an oilseed crop that is easy to grow, harvest, and process
by hand (sesame, peanuts, safflower, NOT soy or corn). Feed the
cake to your animals, sell it to your neighbor, or compost it.
Good luck..... -K
... says Ken, who uses an ApproTec Hela Mk II manual oilpress from
Tanzania, IIRC. Or you can make one with a bottle-jack, or use
designs for an 80kg/hour press, or get a TinyTech set-up, or
whatever. Small is not a problem. See Oilseed presses:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_supply.html#Oilpress
Biofuels supplies and suppliers
Harvest equipment = a scythe.
Best wishes
Keith
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