Pennsylvania
Big Tractor, Green Hypocrisy
From Gene Logsdon:
There’s a lot of loose talk going around these days about “green” alternatives to save the world. Most of that green is really about the color of money, not the environment. The latest green sensation involves a farm tractor that recently broke the record for fast cultivation (fast food requires fast cultivation). According to the news, a 570 hp. AGCO tractor, pulling a 60 foot disk, ripped up 1,591 acres of dirt in 24 hours, or, and I quote, “a football field every two minutes.” And, say the AGCO people, the tractor used only about a gallon of fuel per acre in the process. That makes it a “green” tractor, even though it is not a John Deere. My ancient WD Allis Chalmers (orange) uses about a gallon of fuel per acre too, but pulling a much smaller disk and at a slower speed, it would take me all summer to disk up 1,591 acres.
So why am I not impressed? As is the case for most green sensations, the whole story is not being told. Take for example the ethanol fiasco, the noble idea that the world can be saved from oil shortages by producing ethanol fuel from corn. That notion has been thoroughly debunked but it still lives its own green life as farmers and ethanol plant owners seek to take advantage of the huge subsidies involved. If all the tillable acres in the world were planted to corn to make ethanol, the amount of fuel produced would equal about 17% of what we burn, say the experts, and then we’d starve to death and wouldn’t need any fuel.
So too, a tractor that burns only a gallon of fuel per acre, ethanol or regular, while steaming along tearing up the earth at the rate of a football field every two minutes, isn’t telling the whole story. How much fuel was used mining and smelting and refining the steel used in that 570 hp behemoth? How much fuel used turning the steel into machined parts? How much fuel used transporting workers to and from the mines and the factories? How much fuel needed to heat the factories? To transport the tractor to its ultimate buyer? To transport the executives and advertisers on their worldwide rounds to publicize a heap of iron big enough to rip up a football field in two minutes? And don’t forget to add in the airplane fuel used to fly them to meetings where they mostly play golf. How many gallons of fuel are used to drive the tractor to and from the fields between episodes of ripping up 1,591 acres in 24 hours? How many more gallons have to be burned by other tractors and trucks in planting all that land ripped up by the disk, spraying the crops grown thereon, harvesting the grain, hauling it to market or to storage, not to mention the huge amount of fuel needed to dry the grain after it is in storage to keep it from rotting. Then of course the grain has to be shipped far and wide across the world to its final destination, usually the rumen of an animal penned up in a fattening factory. And remember, even at a gallon per acre, there’s a lot of gas involved ripping up many hundreds of thousands of acres.
Now compare that to another kind of farming, where 1,591 acres would be planted permanently to grass and clover and grazed by 1,000 head of cows or 3000 head of sheep. No annual cultivation would be needed at all. No erosion. No soil compaction. Not even half the machinery cost would be involved, and if the meat, wool, and dairy products were sold locally, only half the transportation costs.
There would be an earth-shattering record in fuel savings, a record that would not mean shattering the earth.
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See also Gene’s Organic Garden And Small Farm Skills - Hoemanship
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Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Author: The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land)
Gene’s latest book: The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life
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Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Gene - thanks for your delightfully sharp article on the green mega-tractor.
We took on a large mountain farm for sheep & cattle here in mid Wales last year, and with it a 35HP Same tractor (Italian wreck).
We’ve a few acres we’ll put down to a cerials/roots-&-pigs rotation, but our main tractor use so far has been making hay (on fields so steep you lean uphill and pray as you go along).
As we’re in transition to organic status, we don’t use chem fertilizers, and would like to switch to horse power, but there are foreseeable problems with heavier tasks such as dung spreading, etc.
It appears that labour has to lower its income expectations enormously (and/or produce values have to rise greatly) before traditional labour inputs can return to viability on the farm, which is a real bind, as they are needed right now in recovering land run derelict (as here, with 60-year-old hedges and heavy weed growth) or abused, as in vast agribusiness holdings).
I wonder if you may have further thoughts on these tractor/draft animal/labour issues ?
With best wishes,
Lewis
October 20th, 2007 at 3:16 amAgree that there’s a bigger picture than just fuel mileage. But don’t you also think that we have to be careful about black-and-white thinking when there’s a ton of room for improvement between the unsustainable place we find ourselves in today and the Utopian world of complete sustainability we would like to be in tomorrow? I get concerned that we can disenfranchise others who are new to the ideas when we shut down progress just because it isn’t moving as fast as we would like. Isn’t something better than nothing?
October 20th, 2007 at 4:03 amGene,
Great article until the end of the article. Have you read the UN report on the contribution of livestock farming to global warming? The livestock industry is the largest contributor to global warming, about 18% of all greenhouse gas emission. Maybe we should plant more vegetables and fruits isntead of raising animals.
Ed
October 20th, 2007 at 8:52 amI appreciate Logsdon’s outside the box thinking but I have a few issues as to whether his idea would be feaseable. And yes I know all about Joel Salatin and others in the grass movement. A thousand cows would be an investment of well over one million dollars. Cross fencing and watering for numermous paddocks required would be another expense. Then the issue of wintering these cattle. Yes I know some do but a model that can be easily replicated is what’s required if you expect this to happen in any scale. Grain farming is as old as civilization. It was around before oil. It will be around after, which is still a long ways off. Oil will be rationed away from snowmobiles and RV’s before farm tractors.
South Dakota
October 20th, 2007 at 7:00 pmTo Lewis Clevendon, Deliberately, Ed, and aaron: Somehow I missed your comments earlier and don’t know if you will catch up to my thanks to all of you for keeping me honest. I like your reference to your old tractor as an “Italian wreck.” Mine is an American wreck (a 1948 Allis Chalmers). I have hills that I lean upwards on too. To Deliberately, you’re right. To Ed. I don’t buy putting the blame on carbon emmission on domestic animals. Jeez. What about all the wild animals, including humans? In the day of the dinosaurs, can you imagine the explosions of their methane??? Or what about those millions and millions of buffaloes and mammoths etc etc. Was there global warming from them???. To aaron: Your model is the model of BIG farming. I doubt big farming of animals or cash grain is the right way. What about a zillion or so SMALL pasture farms? Gene Logsdon
June 27th, 2008 at 6:54 am