I watched several videos on a Combine Harvester's inner workings and I still don't understand how this thing works.
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One 4 meter line wheat and the next one a different crop, with 3 or 4 crops alternating, would be fine too. Especially with kilometers long fields.
Edit: sonething like this:
is this solarpunk 🫴
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From my perspective this "pinnacle of human ingenuity" is actually a farse, because it relies on a monoculture and is therefore unsustainable in the long term.
Don't get me wrong, the engineering is cool and I understand how important the mass production of food has been up to this point in human history, but there is another side of the story. The advent of machinery like this is part of why modern farmers use so many pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers - a monoculture depletes the soil of its nutrients and decreases natural pest control, necessitating the use of chemicals. The use of those chemicals has in turn driven huge ecosystem changes that we are only just beginning to understand the impact of (such as mass pollinator die-offs, changes to soil microbiology, pollution of fresh water sources, pollution of cropland soil, and more) as well as impacting humans in ways we don't understand since some of those chemicals make their way into our bodies.
Came in to make a similar comment. Giant machines like this are a huge part of the problem in a number of ways. Their rigid design limits the kinds of environments that you can farm on, if you're trying to run at competitive scale. It also limits you to monocropping as you said, whereas a complex polycultural system would both more efficiently build soil over time, but naturally deters pests if properly designed and maintained.
They also contribute to soil infertility by overly compacting soils due to their mammoth weight. And they are not at all cheap either, and one of the contributing factors to so many farmers ending up hopelessly in debt.
The bottom line is that industrial farming is not sustainable, and like it or not, homescale and small community agriculture is going to have to play larger roles in our lives if we want to have any hope of staving off famine as resources become more scarce.
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Crop rotation is a great thing but still falls within monoculture. Planting a field with only one type of thing is the definition of monoculture.
I seriously believe that cover cropping, intercropping, and examples like MonkderViete posted are the way forward - they result in higher crop yield per square foot and are more resilient in the face of climate change and pest pressure.
You should learn about the benefits of no till market gardens - they are real and they work.
Covercrop is still monoculture, monoculture isn't inherently bad. Ultimately it comes down to cost. Labor is limited and a lot of the stuff you're talking about are fine for small volume vegetables but you're not gonna get feed the world wheat yields from that.
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They're useful if I've got 20 acres and you've got 43!
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That's nothing compared to the Bagger 288
BAGGER
🧱 288 🧱 BAGGER 🧱 288 🧱 BAGGER 🧱 288 🧱 -
What, why? Barely two cultures have the same harvest time.
You seem to think of a lot of different cultures in rows. What i'm trying to say is, maybe 4 cultures in a field 4 times the size, but alternating rows.
So what if your rows were 1/2 mile wide and 1/2 mile long, and you had dozens of these rows with about 4-6 cultures interspersed amongst them? It would be like a single field with several rows, but at a scale that makes 120' sprayers and 60' combine headers make sense. You know, like a farm.
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Covercrop is still monoculture, monoculture isn't inherently bad. Ultimately it comes down to cost. Labor is limited and a lot of the stuff you're talking about are fine for small volume vegetables but you're not gonna get feed the world wheat yields from that.
You're tilting against the wind. It seems people that know nothing about farming are the ones that have the strongest opinions about farming and food.
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If you think they're complicated to have them described to you, you should try fixing one of the fuckers when it breaks down in the middle of the night.
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It's amazing to me that I discovered there's a new Aesop Rock album purely from the meter of this post, before clicking the link
Two, actually. That one is an album ago. The new one is Black Hole Superette.
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If you think they're complicated to have them described to you, you should try fixing one of the fuckers when it breaks down in the middle of the night.
To be fair, virtually everything is ten to a hundred fold more complicated in the dark.
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To be fair, virtually everything is ten to a hundred fold more complicated in the dark.
And mosquitos are chewing on your ass.
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It works by doing all the hard work while John Deere screws you over even harder than Monsanto.
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It works by doing all the hard work while John Deere screws you over even harder than Monsanto.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Do Americans really not have any other options than John Deere? I hear constant complaints online about the company but when my parents used to farm I don't remember them ever having any of their equipment.
I remember my father used to complain more about the quad bike being hard to repair than any of the farming equipment (I seem to remember it being really hard to find new tires for it).
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And mosquitos are chewing on your ass.
Wondering around bottomless wasn't a good idea.
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So what if your rows were 1/2 mile wide and 1/2 mile long, and you had dozens of these rows with about 4-6 cultures interspersed amongst them? It would be like a single field with several rows, but at a scale that makes 120' sprayers and 60' combine headers make sense. You know, like a farm.
No, not a half mile wide but a few meters wide.
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Covercrop is still monoculture, monoculture isn't inherently bad. Ultimately it comes down to cost. Labor is limited and a lot of the stuff you're talking about are fine for small volume vegetables but you're not gonna get feed the world wheat yields from that.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Cover cropping does not constitute monoculture when done ideally. In my personal experience with cover crops I have used multiple types of cover crop concurrently in one space.
Here is a great source on cover cropping: https://growingformarket.com/articles/cover-cropping-notill-systems
Excerpt from my source:
"Rarely in nature do we see a field covered in just a couple of plant species; the natural soil care principle of maximizing diversity inspires us to do better. At Frith, we aim for at least three species in each mix, but some mixes may contain six or more."And I don't think we'll be able to keep feeding the world with our current style of agriculture, which is generally depleting soil health and setting us up for future failure. We need more people to be active or semi active in agriculture on smaller scale farms and to eat more local food.
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And mosquitos are chewing on your ass.
Assless chaps didn't work out huh ?
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Unreasonable people anon.
Reasonable people adapt to the world around them, use a scythe and get on with things, unreasonable people adapt the world to suit themselves. All progress is from unreasonable people.
Ps Can't remember who said it.
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Assless chaps didn't work out huh ?
I only wear those when I'm moving cows.
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Cover cropping does not constitute monoculture when done ideally. In my personal experience with cover crops I have used multiple types of cover crop concurrently in one space.
Here is a great source on cover cropping: https://growingformarket.com/articles/cover-cropping-notill-systems
Excerpt from my source:
"Rarely in nature do we see a field covered in just a couple of plant species; the natural soil care principle of maximizing diversity inspires us to do better. At Frith, we aim for at least three species in each mix, but some mixes may contain six or more."And I don't think we'll be able to keep feeding the world with our current style of agriculture, which is generally depleting soil health and setting us up for future failure. We need more people to be active or semi active in agriculture on smaller scale farms and to eat more local food.
Again, this isn't going to work for bulk grains like wheat and corn. I've seen plenty of permaculture type farms and they're fine for small stuff and vegetables and more of that is good. But it's not suitable for growing 50 million tons of wheat. Labor is already short and it will get worse.
