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> 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 irr
by 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.
- pleb_nz 4y agoIrrigation is done by pivot irrigation which can't exactly go over or around large trees. Fences usually have systems to allow the irrigation to roll over them https://www.hydro-eng.com/irrigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/08/zimmatic9500_category.jpg https://www.hydro-eng.com/irrigation/wp-content/uploads/site... Here's a poor example of a shelter belt that you might see in my region https://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/85/43/2854357_a22a5dc9.jpg https://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/85/43/2854357_a22a5d... I never said they weren't healthy, you can still be uncomfortable whilst being healthy. I see the effects of animals in extreme heat and cool directly as I live amongst it. You can bet your bottom dollar stock make use it it when it's present. Pretty sure there's a reason for that.