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Perennial polyculture food forests reduces the advantage of high tech equipment. Nature does the work of growing. Replanting is rare. Harvesting is more of a ma

Perennial polyculture food forests reduces the advantage of high tech equipment. Nature does the work of growing. Replanting is rare. Harvesting is more of a manual process.

bryanlarsen 12y ago
Polyculture farming may be the next big thing in farming, enabled by machine vision automated systems. A typical small farmer in Saskatchewan can harvest 100-200 acres of wheat by himself on a single day using a modern combine harvester. Manual harvesting is not an option.
- acveilleux 12y ago
  I don't think people outside of the prairies understand the scale of some of these farms. The average Sask farm was 1668 acres as of 2011.
  - Qworg 12y ago
    As that many acres is difficult to understand, that's a little over 2.6 square miles.
    - acveilleux 12y ago
      And John Deere makes combines as wide as 30 ft. So a 30ft. combine would have to drive 457.6 miles to harvest that farm. And that's not done at highway speed!
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    And that 1668 acre farm is not a corporate farm, it's a family farm run by a single operator without hired hands.
    - randomdata 12y ago
      May still be corporate, because corporations are a way of structuring a business, not an indication of how large or how many people are involved with the business. I expect most family farms are also corporations or even multiple corporations.
      - Loughla 12y ago
        No. Most family farms, at least in my part of the states, are not corporations. They are small businesses in that they have some tax exemptions for being farms, but they are not incorporated. Only the 'slick' farmers (you know, them city folks) or large businesses that are 'family farms' in name only are incorporated.
        randomdata 12y ago
        In fact, I know that several of my neighbours have a corporation setup for each generation of the family farm. These aren't slick city folks or even large businesses. They're every day family farmers that farm the exact same way I do (my farm isn't incorporated). But, like you suggest, maybe it is regional thing.
      - bryanlarsen 12y ago
        A 1668 acre farm around here is a small farm, and is probably not incorporated. But certainly many are. But as you said, incorporation does not make it less of a family farm.
cbd1984 12y ago
What are the yields like? What would doing that for all food do to the price of food?
- briantakita 12y ago
  Yields are pretty high. Though there are many products. So you won't necessarily have high yielding corn, but you will overall have more food & materials. The fruits tend to be more of a mixed bag that is best distributed & consumed locally. > What would doing that for all food do to the price of food? Note that conventional petrol agriculture is heavily subsidized. Removing the subsidy will increase the price of food. It will favor small scale, high nutrition, gardening/farming. It will reduce waste as well.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > Removing the subsidy will increase the price of food. Then it would be wrong to do remove that subsidy. Poor people need to eat, too.
    - fennecfoxen 12y ago
      If you want to help poor people eat, you should give poor people money to help them eat, rather than paying farmers to make one specific type of farming easier and distorting the market to artificially favor something that's actually less efficient (and may have all sorts of crazy side effects on the rest of the world). Favoring direct intervention to fix the actual problem should be axiomatic, really.
      - cbd1984 12y ago
        > If you want to help poor people eat, you should give poor people money to help them eat The more food we can make per unit resource, the more food we have, given that resources are finite. Giving the poor more money does nothing to change that.
        12y ago

Perennial polyculture food forests reduces the advantage of high tech equipment. Nature does the work of growing. Replanting is rare. Harvesting is more of a manual process.

bryanlarsen 12y ago

Polyculture farming may be the next big thing in farming, enabled by machine vision automated systems. A typical small farmer in Saskatchewan can harvest 100-200 acres of wheat by himself on a single day using a modern combine harvester. Manual harvesting is not an option.

acveilleux 12y ago
I don't think people outside of the prairies understand the scale of some of these farms. The average Sask farm was 1668 acres as of 2011.
- Qworg 12y ago
  As that many acres is difficult to understand, that's a little over 2.6 square miles.
  - acveilleux 12y ago
    And John Deere makes combines as wide as 30 ft. So a 30ft. combine would have to drive 457.6 miles to harvest that farm. And that's not done at highway speed!
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  And that 1668 acre farm is not a corporate farm, it's a family farm run by a single operator without hired hands.
  - randomdata 12y ago
    May still be corporate, because corporations are a way of structuring a business, not an indication of how large or how many people are involved with the business. I expect most family farms are also corporations or even multiple corporations.
    - Loughla 12y ago
      No. Most family farms, at least in my part of the states, are not corporations. They are small businesses in that they have some tax exemptions for being farms, but they are not incorporated. Only the 'slick' farmers (you know, them city folks) or large businesses that are 'family farms' in name only are incorporated.
      - randomdata 12y ago
        In fact, I know that several of my neighbours have a corporation setup for each generation of the family farm. These aren't slick city folks or even large businesses. They're every day family farmers that farm the exact same way I do (my farm isn't incorporated). But, like you suggest, maybe it is regional thing.
    - bryanlarsen 12y ago
      A 1668 acre farm around here is a small farm, and is probably not incorporated. But certainly many are. But as you said, incorporation does not make it less of a family farm.

cbd1984 12y ago

What are the yields like? What would doing that for all food do to the price of food?

briantakita 12y ago
Yields are pretty high. Though there are many products. So you won't necessarily have high yielding corn, but you will overall have more food & materials. The fruits tend to be more of a mixed bag that is best distributed & consumed locally. > What would doing that for all food do to the price of food? Note that conventional petrol agriculture is heavily subsidized. Removing the subsidy will increase the price of food. It will favor small scale, high nutrition, gardening/farming. It will reduce waste as well.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > Removing the subsidy will increase the price of food. Then it would be wrong to do remove that subsidy. Poor people need to eat, too.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    If you want to help poor people eat, you should give poor people money to help them eat, rather than paying farmers to make one specific type of farming easier and distorting the market to artificially favor something that's actually less efficient (and may have all sorts of crazy side effects on the rest of the world). Favoring direct intervention to fix the actual problem should be axiomatic, really.
    - cbd1984 12y ago
      > If you want to help poor people eat, you should give poor people money to help them eat The more food we can make per unit resource, the more food we have, given that resources are finite. Giving the poor more money does nothing to change that.
      - 12y ago