Farming Today

[contadino]

As far as primary function goes, a tractor is a tractor is a tractor. It is the things that it tows that change the function and there is far a greater range of these at the small end of the scale than for the big boys, simply because small tractors are used in more niches.

No, you're way off the mark there. Tractors are just like any other product - they're designed for specific jobs. Nobody in their right mind would get narrow 10hp tractor, designed for working between rows of vines, and use it for working a 50ha field of wheat. Nobody would get a 200hp tractor on elevation tyres and work a 1 in 5 hill.

They are, however, the same in that they all pull things. And ignoring the extremes you cite - valid as they are, I agree - a 45hp tractor can do practically any job that a 200hp can. It would do it more slowly, doubtless, but do it, it would.

They're hardly extremes. A spade will do the job of a cultivator, but it doesn't make it sensible use of effort. 200hp tractors shouldn't be necessary. Fields should be smaller, and soil better cared for. There's a good explanation of why big agricultural concerns need massive machines in John Humprys's book The Great Food Gamble. It has very little to do with being able to cover a larger area quickly or 'economies of scale' as it's called nowadays.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I’m not sure we (and « we » is something of a fluid quantity: I know it includes me, but who else ???) are talking at cross porpoises. Or even at bad tempered dolphins.

Consider: I have a hypothetical 200ha. Oil and its derivatives are cheap and I can borrow at 3%, but employing someone to help me farm it is pretty jolly expensive. So I divide my farm into four and plant wheat – sunflowers – wheat – maize in a cheerful rotation that requires me to use NPK by the mega-tonne and lashings of Roundup ™ - but that’s OK because it’s cheap as chips. And I buy a John Derre 8030* to help me do it on a five year deal that costs me practically nothing.

A few years later, oil has tripled in price. Grain values have gone up too, but not by anything like the same amount. The bank now wants 6% and are limiting the funds they are prepared to put my way. Now my options are different. All of a sudden it makes sense to stop importing nitrogen to my plot and have some livestock instead. And my rotations become more complex to include forage crops, pasture and legumes. I cut up my four fields into twenty, sell the 8030 for scrap and by a nice little Kubota instead. I employ a bloke from the village as a stockman.

My point is that the “efficient” version of farming depends entirely on the economic framework in which the farm is operating. But beyond simple economics there are matters of food supply security, diversity and rural employment that should be considered.

Upping the scale of an operation is not always the solution, though a lot of people think it is.

* My next door neighbour has just bought one. It is green and very, very big. He farms 1500ha of (mostly) maize. But I’m not sure he is entirely happy about it. I notice he keeps table rabbits, chickens and has a vegetable plot full of beans. There’s a French peasant in there somewhere just waiting for an excuse.

[contadino]

Consider: I have a hypothetical 200ha. Oil and its derivatives are cheap and I can borrow at 3%, but employing someone to help me farm it is pretty jolly expensive. So I divide my farm into four and plant wheat – sunflowers – wheat – maize in a cheerful rotation that requires me to use NPK by the mega-tonne and lashings of Roundup ™ - but that’s OK because it’s cheap as chips. And I buy a John Derre 8030* to help me do it on a five year deal that costs me practically nothing.

A few years later, oil has tripled in price. Grain values have gone up too, but not by anything like the same amount. The bank now wants 6% and are limiting the funds they are prepared to put my way. Now my options are different. All of a sudden it makes sense to stop importing nitrogen to my plot and have some livestock instead. And my rotations become more complex to include forage crops, pasture and legumes. I cut up my four fields into twenty, sell the 8030 for scrap and by a nice little Kubota instead. I employ a bloke from the village as a stockman.

How about another hypothetical situation. I have 10 ha, on which I use the manure of my livestock to improve the soil quality. I suddenly find I can deal with the land using just a 2-stroke rotavator, rather than employing someone with a tractor to do the work, as the soil is manageable. No need to spend £100k on a massive machine. No need for huge fuel bills or manual labour.

Hold on, that's not hypothetical. That's what I've done. I'm not really interested in what people on 200ha plots do as in my mind it is usually unsustainable. I'm only interested in what one man can do - how much diversity one person can manage. How large a plot can one person manage with as diverse a business model as is necessary to protect oneself against external forces.

Sure, all the capitaliste can go and spend their money on machines, but it's ultimately unsustainable, and I think we all know it.

[Rod in Japan]

I do have a certain fondness for Japanese agricultural machinery. It's about as small as it can get, and the farmers find ways of passing it around amongst themselves and lending it out. If I wanted to take up rice farming tomorrow, I know about six people who would lend me their machines.

[MKG]

Once upon a time, a family had an ox, a few pigs and chickens, and grew wheat and barley, peas, beans and onions on about 16 acres or so. Eight families had to cooperate to hitch their eight oxen to the communal plough so as to cultivate the carucate or hide which they farmed. That's the way it was for about a thousand years, and you'd think that if there was a more efficient method which didn't use services or products from outside that system, then that would have been a long enough time to discover it. They didn't. So that's where you start. You may find that swapping off some of your grain, say, for someone else's physical power (akin to paying money for petrol) is more convenient, but it cannot be more efficient overall because it necessarily subtracts from someone else's system.

And the only way to sustain that is to institute division of labour and wholesale specialisation. Which we did. The only real problem is that we took it too far. Hence the arguments about the relative sizes of tractors.

[ina]

And the only way to sustain that is to institute division of labour and wholesale specialisation. Which we did. The only real problem is that we took it too far. Hence the arguments about the relative sizes of tractors.

On a lighter note - I think the reason why we have all those huge tractors and other machinery is that it is being run by men... You should see their eyes light up at the agricultural shows, when they see those new and invariably bigger machines!

If women had a say about machines, they would go for something you can get on without getting the stepladder out every time...


Seriously, I think even horses and bullocks may have a chance to get back to farm work again in the not so far future. They run without oil. And all that grass along the verges that's being wasted at the moment might be used again then, too... (No need for the council to go around mowing it off, either - more energy saved!)

[contadino]

Seriously, I think even horses and bullocks may have a chance to get back to farm work again in the not so far future. They run without oil. And all that grass along the verges that's being wasted at the moment might be used again then, too... (No need for the council to go around mowing it off, either - more energy saved!)

That's happening already in places like Poland. There was a piece on the R4 Farming Today programme several months back about the new range of draft equipment for horses (hydraulics powered by the turning of the axle, etc..) They even went through the financial case for horses vs tractors and the horses won hands down (cheaper to buy, lower running costs, savings in bought in fertiliser, ability to reproduce, etc..)

Since then, I've seen a marked increase in the number of horses working olive groves around here. When my rotavator gets old and starts making unexpected noises, I'll definitely look into replacing it with a horse.

[DominicJ]

I think we have different ideas of a "big" farm.
200ha is small.
There are farms in australia where they need helicopters to herd the cattle.
http://www.landandfarm.com/lf/s/63/the_q_ranch.asp
75,000 acres.
Thats a big farm.

Saying specialise is all well and good, but sometimes people dont want a £30 bottle of wine, they want a £3 bottle. And for that, well, have a look in your supermarket, they're all from huge Australian or Californian wineyards.
Small French vineyards cant compete with that, so they mass produce wine that is just undrinkable, so the EU buys it and destroys it, or turns it into industrial alchol for Renault. If the EU didnt they'd be forced to move upmarket, as RoJ insists is easy for all, or combine and move down market and fight it out with Blossom Hill.

[Rod in Japan]

California and Australia are both having rather critical problems with water at the moment. Australia currently ships huge quantities of grain, beef, and wine to Japan, which is simply a matter of Japan exporting its water demand to Australia (I'm not sure about wine, but grain and beef are hugely water intensive). Let's see how sustainable that shipping water business is for Australia. I think the penny will drop soon.

[ina]

I think we have different ideas of a "big" farm.
200ha is small.
There are farms in australia where they need helicopters to herd the cattle.
http://www.landandfarm.com/lf/s/63/the_q_ranch.asp
75,000 acres.
Thats a big farm.

You can't say it like that - it all depends on the type of soil, climate conditions etc. 200ha of prime land is, for me, a big farm; 200ha of upland marginal grazing is quite small. And even the Aussies will give up herding cattle with helicopters once the price of oil gets a bit higher.

[DominicJ]

But you only think 200ha is big because of how you think about farms, there are loads on that site 10x as big.
I have no doubt that australian helicopter farming cant last, but that was just an example, and the land is so marginal it simply cant be farmed on a smaller scale profitably. As proof, it wasnt farmed at all previously.
The big corn belt farms in the US arent hurting now, its the small farms that are in trouble, even with ethanol subsidy, and its the same in Europe, without massive subsidy from CAP, most farms wouldnt last 2 years before they went under.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

The big corn belt farms in the US arent hurting now, its the small farms that are in trouble, even with ethanol subsidy, and its the same in Europe, without massive subsidy from CAP, most farms wouldnt last 2 years before they went under.

Though, of course, it is the big farms that get the biggest chunk of the subsidy. Those well-known small holders & guardians of the traditional countryside Tate & Lyle got about £230 million of CAP support a couple of years back. It is mostly the fat boys that want to keep it, after all. It means they can beat the crap out of their competition with unsustainable pricing.

Don't be too sanguine about the big boys in the corn belt either: they're having a miserable year. The ethanol subsidy is a red herring: "only" 50 million bushels of corn go into this, despite all the publicity it gets. The US produces around 13 billion bushel in a normal year. Only about 11 billion this year though. And the soybean harvest is down too.

Thank heavens for the dusty, tired, inefficient farmers of the EU - they should deliver a record 345 million tonnes of grain this year. So we shouldn't starve.

French wine is having its best sales for twenty years. Mostly this is because they can now undercut the Australian and Californians who are having to face up to the economic reality of growing grapes in drought conditions. I note with interest that Blossom Hill are now producing a pino grigio in Italy.

[ina]

Heard on the radio last night that only 24% of all the European subsidies actually get to the farmer. Most goes to the landowner - and there's a heck of a difference between the two!

[DominicJ]

And how big is the Blossom hill farm in Italy?
I'd wager its closer to 1000 acres than 100

[marshlander]

Don't know, Dom but Blossom Hill sells 4,000,000 cases of wine a year and is just a tiny part of Diageo who are HUGE. They own Guinness, 29 distilleries in Scotland inc Bells and Walker, Smirnoff, gordons Gin, Baileys, dozens of brands of beers in 180 countries worldwide, the list goes on and on.

Looks like unless you only drink homebrew you can't avoid them!