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Shelter is good for all stock. The old timers new this and grew trees down fence lines so animals could have shelter in extremes. When driving past properties w
by pleb_nz 4y ago
Shelter is good for all stock. The old timers new this and grew trees down fence lines so animals could have shelter in extremes. When driving past properties with the shelter belts stock are always using them during extremes.
Today, farmers are removing the shelter belts all in the name of efficiency because the shelter belts reduce grass growth under them and make it harder to irrigate.
But damn the animals, at least they have maximised and and can now fully capitalize.
- colechristensen 4y agoDoes anyone irritate grazing land? Is that common at all?
- anigbrowl 4y agoDo you mean irrigate?
- colechristensen 4y agoYes. I suffer from my iPhone picking the correct word and then changing it after i enter the next one.
- lazide 4y agoDecently common on somewhat marginal land. Usually it’s more common to provide hay and similar supplemental feed though. Also common is post-harvest grazing.
- moremetadata 4y agoI'm assuming you mean irrigate land. Before WW2 in the UK, the countryside was covered with loads and loads of ponds and lakes for livestock to drink from and to keep the water table up. Fields were typically smaller with more hedgerows for wildlife to live in. Droughts were less of a problem back then. It was claimed the Germans Luftwaffe could fly by night on the full moon navigating by the reflection of these bodies of water, so the British govt issued orders to fill in these ponds and lakes to make it harder to fly by night. Consequently the water table on farmland fell causing more drought problems and after WW2 these bodies of water have never been re-established by govt orders. The history of the wild apple is also interesting. The Soviet Union paid people to conserve these, but the breakup of the USSR meant these were no longer looked after. They also displayed a symbiotic relationship with other plants just like livestock has displayed a symbiotic relationship with the land. "Prickly shrubs, such as eglantine and barberry exhibiting symbiotic relationships with wild apples by shielding them from predators were also cut" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_sieversii#Conservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_sieversii#Conservation If there were no wild animals, like deer that can feed on the leaves, then the bottom of trees would reach to the floor. The main problem has been trying to feed a growing human population whilst keeping them under control, so ideas sometimes dominate which shouldn't, like we see here with solar cells providing shelter for livestock like sheep.
- biorach 4y ago> It was claimed the Germans Luftwaffe could fly by night on the full moon navigating by the reflection of these bodies of water, so the British govt issued orders to fill in these ponds and lakes to make it harder to fly by night. > Consequently the water table on farmland fell causing more drought problems and after WW2 these bodies of water have never been re-established by govt orders. Citation?
- crakenzak 4y agoAccording to chatGPT: There is no evidence to support the claim that the British government ordered the filling in of ponds and lakes during World War II to prevent the German Luftwaffe from navigating by the reflection of the moon on the water. While it is true that the full moon could provide some illumination for nighttime flights, especially with the use of specialized equipment like the Lichtenstein radar, the idea that the Luftwaffe relied solely on the reflection of water for navigation is a myth. The Luftwaffe had other means of navigation, such as radio beacons, compasses, and celestial navigation. Additionally, there is no record of any official British government policy to fill in ponds and lakes for this purpose. It is possible that individual landowners or local authorities may have taken such action, but there is no evidence of a widespread or coordinated effort by the British government to do so. Overall, this claim is false and lacks factual basis.
- yencabulator 4y agoPlease don't copy-paste ChatGPT output as a reply on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945628
- moremetadata 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(wartime)#Effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(wartime)#Effectivene... "M. R. D. Foot argues that blackouts did not impair navigation by bombers because navigators focused more on reflective bodies of water, railroad tracks, or large highways.[13]" This is about as close as you will get to the truth. You also have what is now called Visual Flight Rules https://youtu.be/0BP_H5tzIM0?t=22 https://youtu.be/0BP_H5tzIM0?t=22 which backs up the claim that pilots used waterbodies to navigate. When people found out, many filled them automatically just like some people knocked out street lights. There own paranoia was used against them, just like we see with migrants in hotels today, or paedophiles in the neighbourhood.
- pleb_nz 4y agoIn NZ it's massively common in areas that were once only suitable for sheep. But sheep products in the current environment are not worth anything, wool especially so. However, dairy has excellent value globally, So now these farms have converted to diary, but that means they need to improve the grass growth to be suitable for cattle which means irrigation. The last 10 years has seen massive swathes of land unsuitable for cattle converted to land suitable via irrigation in my country. This has led to destructive processes and pollution of rivers and water ways though irrigation and fertilisation. It's our dirty little secret.
- antod 4y agoYup, sigh. NZ was a big sheep based economy when I was young. Now sheep are only for land unsuitable for cows or farmers that are stubborn holdouts. It costs more to shear the sheep than the wool is worth now - I really hope that can be turned around somehow so demand for wool can replace that for synthetic materials and those stubborn holdouts get rewarded for it.
- dylan604 4y agoThey're also used as wind breaks. Lots of benefits to the things the old timers did that new stock just tosses out from lack of understanding and lots of over confidence that they know better. It applies to dev work as well, with all of these new fangled fancy ways of doing things because people think they know better. Can things be improved, surely, but there's a lot of things we've "improved" just to recreate the same traps we've already been through. It is tiresome
- rhacker 4y agoA lot of people use the year alone as evidence that some process is outdated. Template: It's ${CurrentYear} and we're still doing ${OldProcess}?! We don't need to do that because of ${NewProcess}!
- ilyt 4y agoWell, if you don't pass on knowledge this happens. If all of your life's lessons are left in your brain instead of properly written down, and with reasoning ("we do this because this", not just "we do this because we did this") attached to it, no wonder next generation needs to re-learn that
- dylan604 4y agoit is also the responsibility of those that don't know to ask questions to understand before just ripping things out by the root before fully understanding why they are there. most of these tree lines are exactly that, lines. Nature abhors straight lines, so it's pretty obvious someone did it on purpose and probably for a reason. it's not hard to ask someone why they are there.
- Ntrails 4y ago> Well, if you don't pass on knowledge this happens. Watching someone re-implement in technology C the same bugs I remember them fixing in their implementation in technology A tells me this isn't precisely about passing knowledge _on_.
- tough 4y ago
- anigbrowl 4y agoWe need to do a better job of measuring and demonstrating the correlation between efficiency and fragility.
- m463 4y agoWhen I read that I thought, fragility ~= efficiency But then I thought of nature, which is pretty amazing. I think maybe: fragility = efficiency / testing-time so yeah, old-timers.
- readthenotes1 4y agointeresting. I had always thought that the farmers left the trees on the property line because they're just so dang much trouble to cut down with nothing but manual labor and they make a good property line.
- dendrite9 4y agoOsage oranges were planted all over as hedge fences, for example in Kansas. Probably in some places the trees were left on the boundaries but I think in many places specific trees were planted because they were good at creating boundaries. thttps://dyckarboretum.org/osage-orange-a-historical-living-fence/ https://dyckarboretum.org/osage-orange-a-historical-living-f...
- justajot 4y agoI was just recently reading an article about the osage orange! While its most popular use was definitely as that of a hedgerow, the wood of the osage orange tree is "unusually hard, durable, and resistant to rot." Native Americans used it to make bows because the wood was durable and flexible, allowing it "to bend and absorb shock without breaking." [The Quirky History of the Osage Orange, Texas’s Ugliest Fruit](https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/osage-orange-history/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/osage-orange-histor...)
- desperate 4y ago[dead]
- ars 4y ago> Today, farmers are removing the shelter belts all in the name of efficiency because the shelter belts reduce grass growth under them and make it harder to irrigate. Do you have a source for that? Because I googled a bit, and found nothing. The photos I found of animals in hot weather with no tree cover are for places where trees don't grow. > Today, farmers are removing the shelter belts all in the name of efficiency because the shelter belts reduce grass growth under them and make it harder to irrigate. This explanation makes no sense. Why would it be harder to irrigate? And who cares about the small amount of grass under a row of trees? It's not like you have trees every 20 feet. > But damn the animals, at least they have maximised and and can now fully capitalize. This also makes no sense - healthier animals are more productive, even if the only motivation you acknowledge is money.
- mattferderer 4y agoI can tell you from personal experience my family farmed very sandy soil. They did strip farming. Very few do this anymore. If you want efficiency, the common method is very wide, large areas of the same crop so you can use several very large machines to do all the work.
- pleb_nz 4y agoHave you never stood under a row of 10 or 20 metre pine or macrocarpa trees? There will be a strip of a metre or so of no growth and it slowly increases in density from there out until 3 to 5 metres out.
- tomashubelbauer 4y agoIf healthier animals are better in terms of economics why don't McDonald's source their meat from free range farms where cows feed on grass and can physically move more than three steps?
- pleb_nz 4y agoExactly, and we should treat people the same, there's no need for an employee to ever leave their desk.
- 4y ago
- toss1 4y agoRemoving the shelter belts is also making the same mistakes as they made in the 1920s that lead to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. The lack of wind-breaks created the conditions for massive dust storms that destroyed both current crops and insane amounts of topsoil that got blown away. But no one cares about history. And so everyone becomes the ignorant herd condemned to repeat history.
- mattferderer 4y agoMy Grandpa joked about this same thing a decade or so ago & predicted it would happen to this farmer who bought land next to him. Farmer bought land next to his & wanted a giant field of corn so he could use his very large machines for more efficient work. That farmer lost his crop & all the fences became small hills as they caught the dirt that flew around. It can be enjoyable to watch history repeat itself so precisely as predicted in such a short time.
- toss1 4y agoWow, karma came back real fast! Hilarious if it weren't so serious. At least maybe he'll learn the lesson and replant bigger and soon...?