[HN Gopher] Farm vehicles approaching weights of sauropods excee...
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Farm vehicles approaching weights of sauropods exceed limits for
soil function
Author : ciconia
Score : 232 points
Date : 2022-05-24 09:13 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pnas.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pnas.org)
| asdff wrote:
| I wonder if you could fill up a cavity on a farm vehicle with
| some lifting gas and reduce weight without reducing mass?
| [deleted]
| cwkoss wrote:
| You'd need a zeppelin sized bladder to lift a moderately sized
| farm vehicle. I think it would likely be impractical due to
| wind.
|
| I think sets of 3 towers with cables between them so tools
| could be translated within their boundaries, kind of like a
| delta-style 3d printer, could work well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Add more axles and wheels to spread out the load. Or even tracks.
| candyman wrote:
| It feels like there should be a more direct way to grow stuff.
| AppHarvest is doing something interesting. Why plant in dirt
| outside and rely on lossy transmission of fertilizer and water to
| the plant? Plus fungus, parasites, etc. A controlled environment
| where you can get the nutrients and water directly to the plant
| seems a lot more efficient. I know the capex is huge but still.
| We probably should all be eating less (and wasting less) food
| here in the US.
| foxyv wrote:
| Mostly it's just economies of scale. Who cares if 20% of the
| crop is lost to random soil related problems if you can grow
| ten times as much stuff in dirt than in a controlled
| environment. Land is so much cheaper than indoor farming.
|
| However, I think the critical thing that is going to make
| indoor farming commercially viable will be water prices. At
| some point, the heavily subsidized water in the western US is
| going to finish collapsing. Indoor farming lets you milk every
| drop of water into product. We're talking 10:1 ratios of water
| usage between outdoor and indoor farming.
|
| Currently, water to grow iceberg lettuce is about 12% of the
| total cost in California at $216 per acre foot. Currently it is
| possible for those rates to triple or even quadruple in the
| next few years. We may be seeing a lot more indoor growing
| soon!
|
| Totally exciting!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Although wheels are much more efficient than flight, I wonder if
| low cost solar charged and battery powered fleets of drones will
| be deployed for seeding and harvest in our lifetimes.
| formvoltron wrote:
| So stop using big engines carrying fuel in the machines? Just run
| electric wires to poles and then run a retractable wire to the
| machine.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Sounds fine and dandy on paper but out in the field ... that
| would require a tremendous amount of infrastructure. The juice
| is not worth the squeeze.
| conorcleary wrote:
| I dunno - it's a thought I hadn't seen put out there and
| you're 100% against it within minutes. The field ain't going
| anywhere - why not have permanent solar-powered
| infrastructure to recharge robotic agricultural enthusiasts?
| randomdata wrote:
| _> it 's a thought I hadn't seen put out there_
|
| The commenter who stated he works for John Deere put out
| the same thought here, but like the parent expressed that
| diesel would have to become a lot more expensive for the
| infrastructure costs to pencil out.
| usrusr wrote:
| Infrastructure that's used how often per year? A dozen times?
| Rail lines that get a dozen trains _per day_ tend to not get
| electrified...
|
| As I've stated elsewhere, I expect a future with drone swarms
| that carry a power line while feeding from it. Certainly not
| cheap (high performance cables are never cheap, think
| hundreds of meters of supercharger cable?), but it would be a
| near-universal base technology for many application fields so
| it would have all the possibility a technology might need to
| start in some an niche and grow from there.
| beambot wrote:
| So many problems with cable-fed drones over farm-sized
| distances: (1) Cables rapidly exceed the vehicle weight;
| (2) keeping cables off the ground requires extreme tension
| beyond the forces capable by the drone; and (3) aerial
| drones are very sensitive to thrust-to-weight. You'd
| effectively need a swarm of drones just to lift the
| cable...
| usrusr wrote:
| A swarm of drones to lift the cable is exactly what I
| meant: basically a cable with a set of thrust motors
| spliced in every n length units that can be coordinated
| to make the cable levitate. The total length of the cable
| is kind of irrelevant, it all boils down to how much
| cable (length and transmission capacity) you can levitate
| per dollar, and per watt.
| HomeDeLaPot wrote:
| Disclaimer: I didn't read the article.
|
| Why are farm vehicles so big anyway? Is one very large vehicle
| more efficient than multiple smaller vehicles, or are human
| operators the main constraint, i.e. because of labor costs it's
| cheaper to hire one guy to drive a bigger tractor than 3 guys to
| drive 3 small tractors? Maybe this is a problem that will be
| solved in the next few decades by driverless tractors, or just
| tractors that are autonomous enough for one operator to "drive"
| several at the same time.
|
| I could see other advantages to having multiple small tractors:
| redundancy (one breakdown doesn't stop the whole show); easier
| transport; easier scaling (can increase or reduce capacity in
| smaller increments; buying one tractor no longer requires a huge
| equipment loan)...
| cogman10 wrote:
| The human factor is definitely big here. You want to plant as
| much as possible with as few humans doing it as possible. So,
| big tractors == faster work.
|
| Some of this has risen because farming has (over my lifetime)
| shifted from small time individual operators towards giant
| corporate farmers. Except for high value crops, it's hard to
| compete with the economies of scale of a mega farmers. They in
| turn use their profits to get bigger and better machines than
| the individual farmer can afford which further allows them to
| outfarm the individual.
|
| Simple example, irrigation.
|
| Small time farmers would have hand lines that need to be moved
| every day manually. Those typically cost about 1 to 2 human
| hours per line to move daily (sometimes longer).
|
| Mid size farmers "splug" on "wheel lines" which have motors to
| move the lines (at around 10k for the motor and another 1k or
| so for the rest of the line). Those cost about 10 to 20 minutes
| per line daily to move.
|
| Large operators pretty much universally use "pivots" which cost
| about $1 million+ to install but are completely automated with
| very low maintenance. Those often don't have a daily cost (more
| like 20 minutes of month at most for maintenance. Some years,
| the maintenance amounts to turning it on and off. And even
| that, is increasingly being able to be handled remotely).
| rtkwe wrote:
| The equipment being pulled has become smarter and smarter over
| the years allowing a lot of control over the planting which has
| increased yields. They're necessarily heavier to contain more
| sensors and actuators though which requires a larger/heavier
| tractor to reliably haul them around fields. The tractors have
| also gotten significantly more advanced from tractors used in
| the past; enclosed cabs with climate control, autosteer to
| follow a programmed path, etc.
| Zigurd wrote:
| > _They 're necessarily heavier to contain more sensors and
| actuators though which requires a larger/heavier tractor to
| reliably haul them around fields._
|
| I'm not buying this causal chain: Sensors do not weigh much;
| I don't see a reason why the number and weight of actuators
| should change because the machines have more smarts.
|
| I suspect tractors and implements get bigger because that's
| an obvious path to higher operator productivity.
| cogman10 wrote:
| You suspect correctly. Tractors weigh more because they
| have steadily increased in size which decreases the number
| of passes a tractor needs to make over a field.
|
| Like having a 20 inch lawnmower vs a 50 inch lawn mower.
| The 20 inch mower can be self propelled with a tiny HP
| engine. The 50 inch mowers are pretty much all riding
| because the extra drag and engine size increase to cut the
| grass is large enough that adding bigger wheels and a
| steering wheel makes more sense than having someone push
| it. Obviously, the 50 inch mower will work a lot faster.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > They're necessarily heavier to contain more sensors and
| actuators though which requires a larger/heavier tractor to
| reliably haul them around fields.
|
| This is a bad assumption
|
| Tractors are heavier because they have larger engines to be
| able to handle larger equipment which in turn allows them to
| do the same job in less time. The weight add for creature
| comforts and sensors is insignificant, easily less than
| 500lbs in a 20k lbs machine.
|
| They are heavier because they are themselves wider or can
| handle wider equipment. In effect, their "drag" has been
| steadily increasing which increases the size of the engine to
| overcome it.
| balb0a wrote:
| When you destroy/squeez fungus in the forest it takes centuries
| to recover[1]. In Prussia when they started with scientific
| forestry, productivity of the forrest dropped significantly after
| around 100 years[2].
|
| Good times to come. I wonder why we look the other way, even when
| we have all the knowledge on our hands.
|
| Two great books: [1]: The Hidden Life of Trees [2]: Seeing Like a
| State
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| If the trees aren't populating Jira tickets, are they really
| even doing anything?
| TinyRick wrote:
| > I wonder why we look the other way
|
| Because it's profitable, unfortunately.
| snambi wrote:
| Industrial farming is a wrong idea.
| Cody_C wrote:
| I recently read a fascinating book about trees. It was called The
| hidden Life of Trees.
|
| One study they talked about in the book, tried to find out why
| pipes were often destroyed by tree roots. Most people assumed it
| was from water leaking or condensation around pipes. However, the
| study found that it was actually because the soil was far looser
| and less compact around the pipes.
|
| It is almost impossible to really gauge all the ramifications of
| any choice within the analog system we live in.
| dandare wrote:
| > [...] chronic soil compaction [...] negatively impacts various
| soil functions (9, 26). These are manifested by a persistent
| decline in crop yields (13, 27, 28), limited water infiltration
| capacity (8, 10), and a decline in other soil ecosystem services
| (29, 30).
|
| It is a pity the article calls these effects as "well known" and
| does not explain them deeper.
| PhaseLockk wrote:
| That's what all those citations are for.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Reading articles like this always amaze me, not so much for the
| problem itself but for the existence of the problem and millions
| like it that I never even consider in my day to day. The more you
| know the more you realize there is so much you don't.
| 7952 wrote:
| I like the design of the article viewer on PNAS. Does anyone know
| anything about the stack they use?
| inetknght wrote:
| I, on the other hand, don't like the design of the article
| viewer on PNAS because it doesn't show anything useful if
| javascript is disabled. I would rather it just point at a PDF
| or epub.
| asdff wrote:
| You can download a pdf at least
| xvilka wrote:
| Can it be addressed by changing the platform of farming vehicles?
| Hexapod walkers, for example?
| imtringued wrote:
| This is a new approach: https://youtu.be/TD9EjVL7Lx4
| cseleborg wrote:
| Not in agriculture, so I don't really know what I'm talking
| about, but...
|
| Isn't that pretty much everything that's wrong with our
| agriculture today? Isn't large-scale monoculture, which this
| system obviously aims to support, a part of the environmental
| problems we're facing?
|
| The original article points to the unsustainable course of
| the current trend, so while the caterpillar system and the
| ability to roll on less land solves the immediate problem
| described, it fails once you look at the bigger picture, I
| think.
| riskable wrote:
| There's no reason why a giant machine can't manage multiple
| different crops/plants at once. The problem in industrial
| agriculture isn't the geometric layout of straight
| rows/columns... It's the monoculture (and
| fertilizer/pesticide usage and soil compaction and plastic
| pollution!).
|
| It would be interesting to see a farm get a new voronoi-
| style layout each growing season.
| cdot2 wrote:
| I don't see that a more complex vehicle would have a
| significant affect. All that matters is the weight/surface area
| contact with the ground. You can achieve that by using tracks
| or just bigger and more tires.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is a lot of active research in this domain but it is hard
| to make something that is as reliable, usually the goal with
| those systems is not to allow for lower soil compaction but to
| be able to work in places where wheeled vehicles can't.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The obvious solution is automated tractors. The main drive
| for larger and larger tractors is to maximize the amount of
| ground covered per time / operator. If the tractors can work
| tirelessly day and night that is somewhat mitigated.
|
| The actual driving part is obviously much more trivial than
| autonomous driving on roads. However there are a lot of hard
| to automate adjustments and maintenance items going on with
| many tractor implements.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Big tractors are also more fuel efficient, which is a bit
| counterintuitive.
| salawat wrote:
| Not really. The larger you make a powerplant, the more
| thermodynamically efficient it can get. This is why
| things like trains and supertankers make sense where they
| are available.
| omegabravo wrote:
| As I understand it (and I don't understand it, I'm not
| source of authority here) the tractors don't need to work
| day and night, they need to work during the important
| planting and harvesting seasons. That happens to be the
| same time that your neighbour wants to do it. Efficiency is
| key here so that one harvester can work several farms 24/7,
| for a limited period of time.
|
| As you outlined, uptime is critical during these periods. I
| spent a lot of my time in remote locations, and reliability
| trumps everything. The cost of a hotshot is significant -
| however I was far more remote than the farms where.
|
| Paying a person to drive the tractor doesn't seem like it's
| the large cost. It's the machinery you need 1x per year, at
| the same time everyone else does.
| rocqua wrote:
| Given that the problem is effectively 'total force over the
| entire footprint of the vehicle', you would need a platform
| that doesn't press down on the ground. I guess helicopers would
| work. Maybe a hovercraft too, but I suspect a hovercraft
| effectively transfers all the force into the ground anyway.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Could this be mitigated by detonating small quantities of high
| explosives a few meters below ground in a 2D grid?
| samatman wrote:
| This... kind of answers your question actually!
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| The answer is yes, bearing in mind this study is actually about
| bioremediation of the toxic residues of (some!) explosives.
|
| I struggle to think of a way that a guncotton deflagration
| could contaminate soil, this could just be a failure of
| imagination on my part but the idea isn't completely insane.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Apparently I'm bullish on explosive farming tech. TNT seems
| highly biodegradable (!) Another pathway
| has been described in Pseudomonas sp. strain JLR11 and
| involves nitrite release and further reduction to ammonium,
| with almost 85% of the N-TNT incorporated as organic N in the
| cells.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC99030/
| robonerd wrote:
| Use fertilizer for the blasting; two birds with one stone.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I think that small tactical nucks might yield better results.
| /S
| orangepurple wrote:
| > I think that small tactical nucks might yield better
| results. /S
|
| I am not sure what small squads of Canadian military have to
| do with this
| jacquesm wrote:
| PNE's were actually suggested at some point:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion
| gostsamo wrote:
| Yep, I know. Still, using explosives on a mass scale to
| counter the actions of tractors is rather impractical. The
| only place it might be considered useful could be the
| Ukrainian war. In all other places, digging the earth to
| plant the explosives will do more for tilling the soil than
| the explosives themselves.
| graycat wrote:
| sylware wrote:
| "cloudflare enable javascript plz"
|
| ...
|
| those "ppl" are still bullying noscript/basic (x)html browsers.
| jacquesm wrote:
| As every farmer knows: it's not the weight that matters but the
| soil compaction, and that's a function of weight over surface
| area of the contact patches of whatever drive train your tractor
| has. That's also why tractor tires are so wide, and high
| flotation tires are commonly used.
|
| Another way in which farmers combat soil compaction is by
| aeration and tilling.
|
| It's true though that tractors are getting larger and heavier,
| but farmers are pretty knowledgeable about these things and
| usually take them into account when deciding what kind of
| machinery (on what kind of tires) to use for their soil, after
| all, if they get it wrong they may end up negatively impacting
| the yield of their land.
|
| Finally, crops tend to be planted in rows for convenient
| mechanical processing, and while walking behind a tractor you can
| actually see the soil rise again after the tractor has passed,
| usually because the soil acts as a sponge, the tractor squeezes
| the water out and once it has passed the soil will spring back.
| It's a bit strange to realize that the ground you walk on is so
| springy because you normally don't notice it.
| tfourb wrote:
| This "as every farmer knows" is naive. Many farmers are smart
| and capable people but both them and the increasingly dominant
| ag-corporations are primarily interested in short term economic
| survival/success and are working within a system of often
| perverse incentives. Most farmers might not enjoy ruining their
| lands but plenty have done so, sometimes knowingly, because it
| works for them in the short term.
| perrygeo wrote:
| bromuro wrote:
| > These are not farmers, they're industrial workers
|
| or more chemical engineers, as a friend working in the
| oranges industry in Spain revealed me.
| gruez wrote:
| >This is the new normal and is largely all an entire
| generation of farmers knows.
|
| That might be true for farmers, but what about
| big/institutional farmland owners? If the practice is killing
| future productivity, surely they'd be incentivized to protect
| their investment? If you're a landlord you wouldn't be cool
| with renting your units to some crackheads for "the biggest
| short-term payday".
| perrygeo wrote:
| Corporations have fiscal obligations to their shareholders,
| in quarterly cycles. "Renting to some crackheads" (a great
| analogy!) is always on the table if one literally believes
| that they have no long term obligations. Not saying ALL are
| so short sited, but there are serious systematic problems
| in agriculture and corporations are certainly not leading
| the way on any solution.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Stand close to railroad tracks when a train goes by. You'll
| feel the ground sink and spring back.
|
| At the right speed and springiness of the track, the train can
| create a standing wave in front that builds (like a resonant
| frequency does) until the track comes apart.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Why not build tractors with treads, like a tank? The whole
| point of tank treads is to maximize the ground surface area
| that the vehicle weighs on.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >The whole point of tank treads is to maximize the ground
| surface area that the vehicle weighs on.
|
| The treads don't spread weight much more than the wheels -
| look at tank treads in practice - they are somewhat loose
| between wheels. Most treads are somewhat loose, meaning the
| tension in them is not enough to be supporting tank weight.
| The exist to provide traction when they catch uneven
| surfaces, where wheels perhaps no longer make contact.
|
| Their point is to allow the tank to catch on non-flat ground
| when things jut between the wheels. Treads allow grip on non-
| uniform surfaces.
|
| But most of the time the weight of the tank is completely on
| (only a few of) the wheels.
| bluGill wrote:
| Because treads are worse than tires for compaction overall.
| As a soils expert explained to me (phd in the subject),
| compaction is a function of weight, but the function is
| something like 0.2*(weight) (obviously it is more complex
| than that and depends on the exact soil type). Compaction
| happens only where the tires/treads touch the ground, and
| tracks touch a lot more ground when you turn so even though
| there is less damage across the field you lose all of that
| and more when you turn around. Not to mention tracks have to
| slide sideways to turn and that is bad for your topsoil.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Not to mention tracks have to slide sideways to turn and
| that is bad for your topsoil._
|
| It's unusual and perhaps not suited to large tracked
| vehicles, but there is an alternative to using differential
| track speed for turning: track warping. Basically the
| vehicle bends the tracks one way or the other to induce a
| turn. The turning radius sucks though.
| chiph wrote:
| Here's Jay Leno driving a Case IH 620 QuadTrac. It's so huge
| it needed a police escort to be driven on the city streets
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zh3OBxh8Po
| marai2 wrote:
| Weighs 52000 lbs (26 tons)! But because of the surface area
| of the track puts down only 5 lbs of pressure (per square
| inch, I think).
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's been done:
|
| https://www.deere.com/en/tractors/row-crop-tractors/row-
| crop...
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| explained a few comments above - the question isn't that of
| direct pressure (that could indeed be solved by using
| tracks), but sub-surface pressure. Probably how the overall
| structure is held together and distributes weight in depth
| under the overall vehicle surface.
|
| In that sense, it would probably help making tractors more
| like ships...
| soco wrote:
| Or like airships, floating above the crops and only
| touching it with the whatever devices are used... Fun
| aside, agricultural devices on rails are not uncommon,
| although definitely not for such large areas like a normal
| field (yet?).
| dotancohen wrote:
| Actually a dirigible fixture could probably reduce the
| weight on the wheels by an order of magnitude for
| (relatively) little cost. Assuming little maintenance for
| the dirigible fixture and reduced maintenance for the
| smaller drivetrain, this might actually make financial
| sense. But it would require a hanger for parking.
| usrusr wrote:
| But only for tasks that aren't limited by traction,
| unless you put mighty jet engines on that poor little
| airship for tilling.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Of course, use the right tool for the job.
| adwww wrote:
| They do, and this is fairly common on vast machines like
| combine harvesters.
|
| However they are a lot more expensive to run and maintain -
| eg. just think about the additional moving parts and
| friction.
|
| Also it's possible they do different damage - the metal
| treads are not as forgiving as soft balloon tyres.
| usrusr wrote:
| With the impeding electrification we might eventually see
| walkers on skis-shaped feet, as a compromise between load
| distributed over a large area and a narrow tread not usable
| for growing. They'd also excel in the metric of total
| traction per peak surface load.
|
| Key technology of electrification would be tethered drone
| swarms that feed from the cable they carry, because I'd
| assume that you'd want to separate batteries from your
| actors so that they are flexible you work from grid
| infrastructure just as well as from some battery truck
| tagging along on an access road (which brings us back to
| surface load, you wouldn't want the battery loading soil
| you still want to grow in).
| robonerd wrote:
| If ski-feet walkers made sense, I don't think they'd be
| gated by electrification. That seems like a job for
| hydraulics.
| bluGill wrote:
| https://blog.machinefinder.com/3255/john-deere-walking-
| harve... for example.
| adwww wrote:
| I would have thought electrification might work well on
| very specialist machinery - perhaps around horticulture,
| vinyards, greenhouses, etc.
|
| But part of the appeal of a big powerful tractor is their
| huge versatility - you'd loose a lot of that if you
| needed additional infrastructure in place.
| bluGill wrote:
| As a John Deere Employee I have to be careful what I say.
|
| I will say (because this is obvious from public
| information) that we are "looking" at electric tractors,
| but making them work is hard. 10 years ago we stuffed as
| many batteries as we could in a 100 horsepower tractor,
| and for 45 minutes it when head to head with a similar
| diesel tractor, then the batteries were dead. 100
| horsepower just above a small tractor these days.
| Remember a Tesla might be able to produce 500 horsepower
| (I can't be bothered to look it up, but something very
| large like that seems reasonable), but to maintain speed
| on a freeway it only needs about 20 horsepower. A tractor
| is expected to produce the rated horsepower for 10 hours
| non stop.
|
| Your idea of a feed cable is something we have looked at
| (you can find an announcement, though it might be in
| German). There are a lot of issues with making it work in
| the real world, though it might be where things go if
| diesel gets a lot more expensive.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| There's also a chart explaining the issues of battery
| electric tractors by Jason Bradford in "The future is
| rural": https://twitter.com/vivekgani/status/142601795539
| 8176770?t=0...
|
| Basically when ya chart out gravimetric and volumetric
| density stuffing batteries doesnt seem to make sense.
| There may be some other options (feed cable, slower
| cycle, etc.)
| bluGill wrote:
| I forgot the obligatory I don't speak for my employeer
| seventytwo wrote:
| Running cabling on irrigation pivots or other existing
| infrastructure might be an option. Wouldn't work for
| flooded fields, of course.
| riskable wrote:
| Has anyone tried standing up a cable car-like system
| where overhead lines pull (and power) the tractor? You
| could use wind turbines as the poles that keep the wires
| up in the air (though I suppose you could also use
| subsurface cables but that would reduce the growing
| surface a bit; then again, there's always space between
| rows of crops).
| bluGill wrote:
| In the horse age things like that were tried. It isn't
| practical to setup in a large scale, but if fuel prices
| continue to go up weird things might be more practical
| than fuel...
| clows wrote:
| https://electrek.co/2021/12/15/john-deere-buys-kreisel-
| elect... makes me think John Deere is very much looking
| into electrification.
|
| It seems people (outside the agriculture industry)
| underestimate what todays tractors (and even more so
| harvesters, etc) can do and how much power that requires.
| Harvesters running 12-24 hours a day for days or weeks
| seem way out of reach of what the current battery
| technology can accomplish.
|
| I'd bet on hydrogen engines (at least in the next 5-10
| years) for larger machines.
|
| On the other hand tractors are multipurpose tools and it
| highly depends on what it will be used for. If the
| tractor is only expected to run a few hours a day then
| batteries might actually work
| jessaustin wrote:
| _I 'd bet on hydrogen engines..._
|
| Since the infrastructure already exists wherever there is
| serious agriculture, we should probably call that "liquid
| anhydrous ammonia engines". NH4 is a more practical
| carrier for hydrogen than its elemental form.
| supermatt wrote:
| They are (usually) rubber tracks.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's not the tracks that cost you. It's the idlers,
| sprockets, etc.
| supermatt wrote:
| My comment was is in response to metal treads causing
| damage...
| thatcat wrote:
| It's the pressurized air in the tire that reduces applied
| ground pressure from the vehicle not just the surface
| material.
| supermatt wrote:
| Not sure why you are responding to my comment either...
| but what you are saying makes no sense to me.
|
| Obviously the pressurised air itself has mass, but I
| think its more to do with tyre deformation modifying the
| contact surface area. The air inside is just to
| distribute the load across the contact area.
| floren wrote:
| I've seen some mighty big combine harvesters, but I've
| never seen one on tracks.
|
| Tractors on tracks, yes.
| bluGill wrote:
| Tracks are an option when buying a combine. I'm not sure
| how popular, but they are a factory option.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why not on harvesters?
| [deleted]
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| This article considers stresses further down, where the load
| has already had a chance to spread substantially over a large
| are.
|
| Loosely speaking, at some depth it's the entire column of
| soil below that supports the weight of the machine, and
| piling on more weight will exceed the uncompressed strength
| from the column, and so it compresses to handle the load. The
| problem being that compacted soil is bad for plants ability
| to grow there.
| bluGill wrote:
| Only where it the tires travel (and a bit to the side),
| which is why one heavy tractor are still better than many
| small light ones doing the same job: the heavy tractors
| does a bit more damage to a small area, but the light
| tractors do a bit less damage to a lot more area.
| ciconia wrote:
| As I understand it the problem is rather (as the article
| disccusses and as others here have commented) the long-term
| damage to deeper layers of the soil, resulting in "hardpan"
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardpan
| supermatt wrote:
| They cover exactly this in the article.
|
| The main take is "while surface contact stresses remained
| nearly constant over the course of modern mechanization,
| subsoil stresses have propagated into deeper soil layers and
| now exceed safe mechanical limits for soil ecological
| functioning".
|
| i.e. they state that the stresses propagate deeper into the
| soil, regardless of the pressure imparted on the surface.
|
| I dont understand it exactly, but thats what they are saying. I
| guess its something to do with the increased overall mass being
| supported by and compressing the underlying soil layers, rather
| than the (relatively) shallow sub-surface compaction we are
| usually concerned about.
| fho wrote:
| Completely anecdotal case in point: I live on what used to be
| a farm. Last year was the first where the well below the
| house did not carry any water despite moderate rain
| throughout the year. Instead, heavy rainfall in the last days
| carried away the top soil layers and washed them off the
| fields and onto streets and playgrounds.
|
| To me, the explanation that lower layers have been compacted
| and now block the water seem pretty reasonable.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >To me, the explanation that lower layers have been
| compacted and now block the water seem pretty reasonable.
|
| The simpler and more likely explanation is that you have a
| clay or otherwise mostly impermeable substrate.
| chrisBob wrote:
| In fact you SHOULD have a layer of clay between the
| surface and the ground water you are drinking. You don't
| want a fast path between surface contamination and your
| well water.
| bluGill wrote:
| You want a compromise. You need water to get to the well
| somehow. It needs to get there fast enough to replace
| what you use, but not so fast that it isn't filtered
| first.
| hinkley wrote:
| Recently I read an article in which someone pointed out that
| while compaction in the root zone can be mitigated by better
| management practices, compaction at the bottom or below this
| are will remain until the next glaciation period.
|
| That is very, very bad. Practically our only option at that
| point is to build soil _up_ which is not something modern
| farming remembers how to do.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Where can one find the practice of building up the soil?
|
| Is it a "lost-art" due to introduction of fertilizers?
| hinkley wrote:
| Tillage combined with fertilizer. Tilling fluffs up the
| soil temporarily, but it can and often does compact down
| harder than it was before.
|
| Organic farming started down this path, but semantic
| diffusion killed that, and the mantle was taken up by the
| no-till and permaculture people, after their own
| fashions.
|
| The question of whether animals help or hinder is still a
| bit of an open one, but there is some evidence that in
| the wild, herd grazing was a net benefit to prairie
| health specifically because predator pressure keeps the
| herd moving. We see a similar thing in forest settings.
| In areas where wolves have been removed, the deer end up
| damaging the trees.
|
| A number of farmers have been working on rotation grazing
| strategies, typically using movable electric fences and
| short intervals between moving the animals. Joel Salatin
| and Gabe Brown are two people you can find on youtube
| (and in Gabe's case, at the book store). IMO Gabe's
| videos have more information, while Joel's a better
| salesman.
|
| Edit to add: There's also controlled fires, but that's a
| far tougher sell in this day and age.
| tfourb wrote:
| Search for "regenerative agriculture" and "permaculture".
| It's not necessarily something we "lost". While some
| ancient farming techniques can be regenerative,
| exploitative practices have been part of agriculture
| since its inception. In its modern form, industrialized
| agriculture is essentially strip mining.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can contact your local ag university. Building soil
| up is hard, if you are building a mm of soil every few
| years you are doing great - good luck measuring that.
|
| Other posters have mentioned no-till: it takes about 7
| years from the time you decide to go no-till until the
| time when your land yields as much as equivalent land
| that has been tilled all along (assuming all else is the
| same), but after those 7 years no-till yields better than
| tilling the land. Thus the question is are you willing to
| make that investment.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Let's say you have a load of 1000 kg on a 1 square meter
| steel plate on a field. What is the compression 1 meter
| underground directly below? Less than at the surface. What
| about compression 1 meter underground and 0.5 meters to the
| side from the center, ie below the edge of the plate? Even
| less. And 1 meter to the side, even than that. The load
| spreads underground. From a small point load, it dilutes fast
| with depth.
|
| What if you add a similar load directly adjacent to the
| previous one. Pressure is same but area is added. What is the
| compression 1 meter underground, at the border between the
| plates. It's more than in the previous case, since both loads
| now contribute to it.
|
| So there is a sort of load pyramid that has to form
| underground to support each point load. And the more point
| loads you add in a grid, the deeper you go, the pyramid
| overlap more together. So with constant pressure, the wider
| area you have, the more there is stress deeper down, and the
| worse the effect gets with distance.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >So there is a sort of load pyramid that has to form
| underground to support each point load. And the more point
| loads you add in a grid, the deeper you go, the pyramid
| overlap more together. So with constant pressure, the wider
| area you have, the more there is stress deeper down, and
| the worse the effect gets with distance.
|
| This only works in the land of spherical cows.
|
| In reality the pressure is never going to be higher than
| what it is at the contact patch and while a much wider area
| is bearing the load friction between particles and height
| of overburden dominate.
|
| If what you are proposing was true many sorts of
| construction projects would be much simpler
| boringg wrote:
| And it's exactly this part that might elude the "Farmers
| typically know everything" argument.
| xbar wrote:
| I sat around with a group of farmers for years, listening
| to them tell me that they knew what was best to produce
| on their land profitably.
|
| Much of their formerly-arable land became un-arable and
| is today made entirely of sprawling tract homes.
| truffdog wrote:
| There were a bunch of famous "scientific agriculture"
| disasters in the 20th century caused by simplifying
| assumptions being too simple.
|
| The pendulum of worst or best practice swings both ways
| and it's difficult to adjudicate without a ton of local
| context.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...today made entirely of sprawling tract homes._
|
| Farms fail all the time for a variety of reasons, but
| even successful farms can be less valuable than suburban
| residential subdivisions. If the farms in question were
| further from the city, better farmers would buy/rent them
| and the land would be productive again.
| troyvit wrote:
| One of the problems goes back to the reason cities are
| where they are to begin with. People settled where the
| farming was best. More people came to join them, the
| farms became settlements, the settlements towns, and the
| towns cities. Now all our best land has been paved and
| farmers are out trying to grow stuff on land that
| previous generations passed over as not sufficient.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cities cannot be supported by the farms nearby and must
| be located near an easy place to ship goods. That was
| water for most of human history, until the train
| happened.
|
| Small towns happen all over because of farming reasons,
| but even then access to trade was a consideration, but
| only secondary to close to farms. (which is to say if
| there was good farm land far from any way to trade there
| will still be a town someplace - you see this more with
| mines as mineral often are in places that are difficult
| to get to by trade, while farm countries implies enough
| water which implies rivers)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| _If the farms in question were further from the city,
| better farmers would buy /rent them and the land would be
| productive again._
|
| 1. You are assuming "better farms" have the capital and
| will available to purchase the land.
|
| 2. Just because a competent farmer purchases the land
| does not make the land arable. It could take decades to
| undo the damage from improperly cared for land.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| A competent farmer isn't going to be purchasing useless
| land.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Why not? Information asymmetry is hard to overcome
| sometimes. Someone might attempt due diligence but still
| get burned.
| bluGill wrote:
| When someone wants to sell a field the real estate agent
| will ask for copies of the forms you submitted for
| government insurance, and other forms of proof of that it
| yielded. you don't have to give this, but it is a red
| flag to most farmers (not all farms collect this data,
| they are not worth as much). Giving incorrect information
| is fraud.
|
| Of course there is always information asymmetry, but farm
| buyers are aware of it. In most cases the buyer already
| lives in the area, so they know just be driving by over
| the years what really happens.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I am assuming a functioning market for farmland. As I
| have observed over several decades, and my father and
| grandfather observed for much longer, the market for
| farmland is _brutally_ efficient. (Insufficiently-
| regulated monopsonies arrange society so that their
| inputs are as cheap as possible.) Lots of rural land lies
| fallow, and much of that has ruined some poor farmer who
| tried to grow or graze ground that wouldn 't pay him
| back. My point is just that while we can draw that
| conclusion about empty fallow ground, we can't draw it
| about ground that currently sees more remunerative use
| than farming.
|
| I don't think we can really know anything for sure about
| point 2 for hypothetical internet discussion agricultural
| ground. It is probably true that _some_ land has been so
| damaged, but it is also possible for farmer B to have
| better results than farmer A on the same land. This is
| possible even if they are in some sense equally skilled
| and capitalized. It doesn 't rain the same every year...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Is that because they didn't know what they were doing or
| because they saw the writing on the wall and planned
| their exit?
|
| Low margin industries tend to have a lot of things that
| are done "wrong" by the calculations of the clipboard
| warriors that dominate online discourse because said
| calculations tend to assume constants for things that
| should are variable (like the regulatory situation, state
| of technology in an industry or rate of progression
| therof) and assume amortization timelines that are
| unrealistic. When your margin is razor thin it often
| makes the most sense to do things in a manner that's non-
| optimal on paper but yields guaranteed returns today. Do
| that every day and you stay in business. You might make
| less money in the long run but you aren't taking on risky
| capital investments or boxing yourself into a risky
| corner with inflexible business practices.
|
| There are two metal recycling yards local to me.
|
| One is part of a chain, run by a subsidiary of a public
| company. All they do is scrap metal and they are highly
| efficient at it. Things are clean and run by the book.
| The facilities are orderly. The machines are new. You
| can't scrap a car, a street sign, or anything else that's
| suspect without giving them all sorts of ID. On paper,
| they do everything right.
|
| The other one is a 150yo family own business. They do
| scrap metal but have a handful of other income streams
| using the same facility (everything is for sale,
| basically). I don't think they have a single tool or
| piece of equipment that was made this century. The
| facility is always overflowing with piles of various
| materials that come and go in no apparent order. Their
| workplace safety is fine, but absolutely rife with tiny
| things they could get fined for. They pay their employees
| crap and make up for it with perks (free lunch every day,
| free fuel oil in the winter, can use company trucks and
| facilities for personal projects with permission, etc).
| I'm pretty sure you could scrap a stolen cop car there if
| you brought it in the same day that the full train cars
| of processed material go out. On paper all this is wrong.
| The clipboard warriors would have a field day making it
| "better"
|
| Guess who weathered the pandemic with nary a slowdown and
| guess who couldn't retain staff or keep their machines
| running and cut back hours?
| shigawire wrote:
| So the answer is exploiting workers better and criminal
| activity?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| short answer is yes, exploiting workers and "defining
| your activity as legal" whether it is or not.. that is
| what wins in a highly competitive field.
|
| source: electronics recycling reformer, crushed
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The by the book business isn't hiring young people and
| teaching them how to drive heavy equipment. If their
| employees felt exploited they'd have problems retaining
| them.
|
| I think their employees care more about the perks and the
| fairly laid back work environment than they care about
| all the fire extinguishers on the property having an up
| to date tag. I know I did back when I worked those kinds
| of jobs.
| [deleted]
| bumby wrote:
| > _fire extinguishers on the property having an up to
| date tag. I know I did back when I worked those kinds of
| jobs._
|
| This is a problem with how you're thinking about low
| probability events. Yes, rules only matter when the low
| probability event occurs. Do you, for example, not care
| about up-to-date A&P logs on the aircraft you fly in as
| well?
|
| I'll be the first to admit that regulations can go beyond
| what should be considered an acceptable risk, but we have
| to at least acknowledge the risk they are meant to
| mitigate before determining if it's a reasonable
| regulation. That often involves understanding the
| consequences of low probability events, something we're
| usually not good at thinking about very well on a day-to-
| day basis.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > If their employees felt exploited they'd have problems
| retaining them.
|
| That is not usually true. Lots and lots of people feel
| exploited by their employers, yet stay in their jobs.
| Generally, they have financial obligations, need money
| and benefits, and jobs aren't so easy to replace.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The family scrap yard is hiring able bodied young men and
| training them to drive heavy equipment (which they then
| presumably slap on their resumes). I know they get free
| lunch and (used/questionable) fuel oil/diesel because
| I've discussed it with an employee (last July/August or
| thereabouts). Based on the demeanor of everyone there it
| seems like a great place to work if you don't mind
| working outside and a fair amount of physical labor. I
| don't know what they're paid but all things considered
| it's probably crap. They wouldn't be hiring highschoolers
| if the pay was good. Considering how permanent some of
| their employees have been over the years despite being at
| an age where one is typically "leveling up" quickly.
|
| I feel very comfortable saying they're not exploited.
|
| I don't have the same visibility into the "corporate"
| yard because I only go there when I have to (they are
| only closed Sundays and federal holidays) and they have
| organized their workflow to keep their customers at arms
| length.
| bumby wrote:
| What builds the resiliency in the latter compared to the
| former?
|
| If it's "turning a blind eye to regulations" that leads
| to follow-up questions. Is the intent of the regulations
| that are not appropriate? (i.e., the requirements are
| wrong?) Or is it that the former is inefficient about
| implementing the requirement? (i.e., the process is bad).
| Both of those have fixes that are outside of the
| dichotomy proposed in your post.
| asdff wrote:
| I think thats only a minority of cases where land grows
| arid and is sold and this arid land is also valuable
| enough where homes can be built and immediately sold.
| I've lived in areas on the suburban/rural boundary and
| its not really like that. The farms are very productive,
| its just a suburban tract with homes starting at 400k
| makes a lot more money than a soybean harvest so when a
| developer comes a knocking farms are eager to sell. The
| children don't want to be farmers like their parents,
| they want capital for investment in other ventures and
| are happy to exit the farm business. Around these new
| housing tracts fields are still being plowed and
| harvested because the soil is still productive.
|
| Plus with modern agriculture its hard to get arid land
| unless you are broke and cant afford fertilizer. Plants
| need nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. they will grow
| in a cup with some inorganic gravel or on a pile of rusty
| screws or in some pocket lint if you put these three
| things in water.
| loeg wrote:
| At the limit (infinitely wide load), the max sum somewhere
| in the middle is just going to be the point load at the
| surface (plus the weight of the dirt). The load you've
| described isn't an infinite motion machine.
|
| I guess you're saying constant pressure x wider = more
| weight? So is GP, but the other way around: more weight
| divided by more width keeps pressure constant.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'm not going to try doing the math, but the deeper you go,
| the more the pressure will be dominated by the weight of
| the soil above.
| wrycoder wrote:
| While it's better to avoid it in the first place, farmers
| have long dealt with subsurface compaction using an implement
| called a subsoiler, which breaks up the compaction and
| restores normal drainage.
|
| The article didn't address that, but did speculate about the
| ecological intentionalities of sauropods. I suggest the
| authors do more field work, preferably with a horse and a
| moldboard plow.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Indeed, which is why the title is so strange. Sauropods are a
| strange thing to compare with anyway, I would compare it with
| other methods actually used for working the land.
| anotheryou wrote:
| I just skimmed the abstract but it sounds like they made
| the comparison because sauropods already compressed most
| soil everywhere. So it simplifies it a bit in the title,
| but it's about exceeding the level of compression already
| established anyways due to sauropods.
|
| Also the weight over area might become less relevant the
| deeper you go because it naturally spreads outwards
| anyways.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > because sauropods already compressed most soil
| everywhere
|
| That happened long ago that I don't think that you can
| state that with such certainty about the state of soil
| _today_. It makes zero sense. Sauropods lived at the
| latest 66 million years ago, and quite possibly longer.
| Unless there is some other link that the article tries to
| make but I 've missed.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Sauropods are presumably the heaviest things we know to
| have worked the land in anything like a sustainable way:
| being herbivores they obviously can't survive for long as a
| species if they permanently damage the soil to the point of
| being unproductive simply by walking on it.
|
| It would be fair to object that what was unsustainable by
| plants then might not be a problem for more modern plants,
| but I'm not sure what your comment about other methods aims
| at. The uncertainty comes from machines reaching previously
| unexplored weights, comparing with soil effects from
| lighter methods is unlikely to tell you if there's
| something bad coming.
| jacquesm wrote:
| All we know is that it apparently worked for Sauropods,
| not what the upper limits are, and it need not have been
| sustainable, that depends on how big an area they were
| covering and how many of them there were, that it was
| sustainable is something the article seems to assume
| without further consideration.
|
| Other methods are more applicable because we actually
| have data on what works and what doesn't with respect to
| soil loading, farmers _really_ do not want to damage
| their land ( 'damage it in an hour, take a decade to
| recover') and have learned the hard way not to overload
| the soil already.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The resistance of soil to compaction is totally different
| in a forest with mighty trees and roots, where these
| beasts presumably roamed, and a barren field of dirt.
|
| And secondly, 'sustainable' to a heart of wild beasts
| does not mean harvest every year - maybe the heard comes
| back in 20 years when soil has recovered.
|
| Lastly, maybe they wheren't sustainable, after all they
| are extinct.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > Lastly, maybe they wheren't sustainable, after all they
| are extinct.
|
| I mean, they existed for tens of millions of years
| (according to wikipedia), which is 1000's of times longer
| than the entirety of human farming; I think this easily
| classified as "sustainable".
| pbronez wrote:
| Yes. I think GP's point is that dinosaurs and big
| tractors are different enough that it's unwise to dismiss
| concerns about this as "well, it worked for the
| dinosaurs."
|
| Mass and ground loading is just one part of the picture.
| Roam area, root structure, etc make a difference.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The point of the article is that from the fact current
| heavy tractors are ruining soils we should wonder how
| Sauropods managed to survive despite being worse for the
| soil.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Oh, thats easy - we are 8 billion, sauropods were a few
| million. We can't digest cellulose, and sauropods could.
| We eat mean, and sauropods didn't.
|
| If you can digest tree bark and have 5 square kilometers
| per person you can damage the soil as much as you want,
| something will still grow.
|
| But if you want civilisation to survive, we need a
| regular harvest of 40 tons per hectare for potato, and if
| that number falls to 20 there is a famine.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The Sauropods where around for over 20 million years
| though, but moving at an average of 1 m/s it doesn't take
| even a year to visit all square metres inside the
| allotted box.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That number was for a human - a hectar of land can feed a
| person, so 500 hectars can feed a person even if you are
| inefficient, damaging the soil, etc.
|
| You are the one advocating we live like Sauropods, so you
| should be telling us what was the roaming range of one -
| a male bobcat has roaming range of 20 to 70 sq.
| Kilometers
| anotherjesse wrote:
| I've been listening to Nick Offerman read The World-Ending
| Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry. Wendell talks about
| using horses instead of tractors - the impact on the land
| and the economics. (using horses is just a small part of
| the economics - a community / local approach being a large
| aspect of Berry's writings)
|
| Coming soon: Chris Pratt using a team of sauropods to farm
| in the next Jurassic Park movie.
| usrusr wrote:
| > Chris Pratt using a team of sauropods to farm in the
| next Jurassic Park movie.
|
| If that's not in Randall Monroe's What If, I assume it
| must be in the upcoming sequel?
| lupire wrote:
| _Simpsons^WFlintstones did it_
| YinglingLight wrote:
| azernik wrote:
| The comparison comes because they're trying to draw
| conclusions about the effects of large sauropods on the
| prehistoric environment from modern experience with
| mechanized agriculture.
|
| "As the total weight of modern harvesters is now
| approaching that of the largest animals that walked Earth,
| the sauropods, a paradox emerges of potential prehistoric
| subsoil compaction. We hypothesize that unconstrained
| roaming of sauropods would have had similar adverse effects
| on land productivity as modern farm vehicles, suggesting
| that ecological strategies for reducing subsoil compaction,
| including fixed foraging trails, must have guided these
| prehistoric giants."
| dotancohen wrote:
| This is strange because the subsoil composition of today
| vs. 65+ million years ago, let alone 250 million years
| ago, is substantially different. Mostly different
| insects, different bacteria, and though Earthworms did
| exist for much of that period, other types of worms did
| not. Lignin was already in trees and mushrooms were
| already in the ground, but soil as a living ecosystem was
| far less developed and alive than it is today - it was
| probably closer to regolith at least in the 250-100
| million year ago period.
| azernik wrote:
| I agree that it's a pretty shaky extrapolation they're
| making here, just trying to explain the reasoning.
| fredgrott wrote:
| former, son of family of farmers...
|
| It is more than that
|
| When you over produce crops you tend to plant them in narrow
| rows which overloads the soil hence the need to use fertilizer.
| Note, it's been this way since the 1940s in USA and Europe.
|
| Or in short words we are not being effective in feeding the
| world and are wasting efforts on capitalistic goofs rather then
| using more effective solutions.
|
| Native American Indians used a technique borrowed from South
| American Indians where they refused to do monoculture, instead
| they grew 3 to 4 crops in the same field.
|
| If we want the future world to starve we will stay on
| Monoculture.
|
| If we want to save the planet then we need to move away from
| Monoculture.
| kuhewa wrote:
| There was a reason for the green revolution though.
| tfourb wrote:
| Nobody has ever disputed that mechanization and intensive
| use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers will increase
| yields in the short term. But what we are currently
| experiencing are the long-term consequences, which together
| with the effects of climate change and the vulnerability of
| global supply chains pose a real danger to food security
| around the world.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > vulnerability of global supply chains
|
| We are much better off with them than without them.
| Someone might say, when their car breaks down, 'being
| dependent on this car is causing me serious problems; I'm
| better off with a horse'.
| dry_soup wrote:
| > Native American Indians used a technique borrowed from
| South American Indians where they refused to do monoculture,
| instead they grew 3 to 4 crops in the same field.
|
| Are you talking about crop rotation or growing multiple crops
| in the same field at the same time?
| gibspaulding wrote:
| The latter. They're probably referring to this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
| Loic wrote:
| Same field, same time. This allows each crop to share
| different proportions of the soil nutriments, but also help
| each other because you reduce the pest load as pest do not
| target the same way the different crops.
|
| This is the same principle we have in _mixed_ forestry
| (where I have more experience).
| bluGill wrote:
| They did that, but modern science has checked it out, and
| found the crops competing with each other means all crops
| are harmed. Crop rotation - where you grow a different
| crop every year is a much better answer.
| Loic wrote:
| I would be interested in your publications because doing
| a simple search[0] and reviewing a couple of papers
| provide me with more positives than negatives.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=mixed%20cropping
| bluGill wrote:
| I could have sworn wikipidea had information on that
| years ago. It has been removed now if so. I can no longer
| find my sources.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Presumably:
|
| * https://inthesetimes.com/article/regrow-native-american-
| agri...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
| linsomniac wrote:
| They do say in the article that this is impacting root area
| below tilling depth, which I presume means that deeper tilling
| could help, but I'm unaware of whether this level of tilling
| involves turning a dial, or designing new equipment.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I know that in the Netherlands this has huge implication. In
| the Netherlands the groundwater level is artificially
| maintained. Farmers have a large influence on this level
| historically because they don't want it to be too high or else
| they wouldn't be able to use their heavy equipment. But since
| there has been quite a drought in the summer in recent years
| many other parties want to increase the ground water level.
| alecst wrote:
| The idea that farmers already know this and manage it through
| tilling is contradicted by the abstract:
|
| > We demonstrate that modern vehicles induce high soil stresses
| that now exceed critical mechanical thresholds for many arable
| soils, inducing chronic soil compaction in root zones below
| tillage depths and adversely affecting soil functioning.
|
| I'm also skeptical that farmers are aware of what's going on
| below root zones.
| sitkack wrote:
| Programmers who frequent HN are known to be multifaceted
| specialists who can debunk and upend entire swaths of
| advanced study by only skimming the abstract. That is why we
| come here, to see that magic first hand.
| randomdata wrote:
| Speaking as a farmer, the "plow pan" is an old and well known
| concept. While it is true that routine tillage does not reach
| these depths, there are various techniques, including what is
| known as deep tillage, to try and address the problem at
| those greater depths. With the advent of GPS, controlled
| traffic farming moved to keep the machines on the same tracks
| to limit the damage to specific paths in the field in
| recognition of the same.
|
| Maybe the study is talking about something else, but if
| that's the case I'm not sure it has made itself clear. We are
| very much aware of what goes on below the root zone and
| understand the potential yield loss impact that can come of
| it if not managed well. We work closely with the scientific
| community to ensure that we are aware of these types of
| things.
| gdubs wrote:
| When we bought our farm it had been conventionally farmed for
| decades. Not even by the biggest tractors in the world. But the
| compaction is real, and the hard pan that develops over time is
| as well. Tiling and aeration release a lot of carbon into the
| atmosphere, and while they offer some short term benefit, they
| also destroy the soil structure over time. This is why "no
| till" is a popular buzzword these days; people are trying to
| find ways to replace tiling in the effort of rebuilding soil.
|
| This isn't new -- when "Tree Crops: a permanent agriculture"
| was written last century, it focused on the ever depleting top
| soil in the United States and elsewhere, and inspired the
| concept of Agroforestry.
| toper-centage wrote:
| > Another way in which farmers combat soil compaction is by
| aeration and tilling.
|
| The problem is that constantly aerating and tilling the soil is
| destroying microbiomes and fungal networks. It's one of the
| fundamental principles of regenerative farming. In good
| industrial fashion, we destroy nature (overfarming) and try
| solving it (chemical fertilizers) only to destroy it further
| (mono cultures, no biodiversity, leading to soil degradation,
| reduced yields), so we try to fix it again (huge machines, more
| mono cultures), and now these machines are destroying the soil
| because they are too heavy. It's time to dial back and rethink
| what we're doing.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Yes, there's an actual no-till movement with organic farmers
| as well. It's popular for two reasons:
|
| - It's a lot less work (no tilling, less need for getting rid
| of weeds). Especially for private gardeners, interesting to
| know probably.
|
| - You can actually get good results with it. Healthy soil
| means plants have an easier time (less pests and diseases,
| which are generally signs of plants not doing great).
|
| Simply using nature to work for you instead of trying to
| against it can be a huge time saver.
|
| IMHO there are a few positive trends in agriculture:
|
| - farmers are starting to like some of the organic farming
| practices. They work and produce good results. Also the
| produce is more valuable.
|
| - high tech farming is all about being smarter with
| resources; including water, soil, labor, energy, fertilizers,
| pesticides etc. Low tech, intensive farming is mostly about
| blindly doing things at scale. It works but it isn't
| necessarily very efficient.
|
| - vertical farming is much more efficient with land and
| increasingly used for producing high value produce. There
| might be some future breakthroughs with more nutrient rich
| things like rice or grains but that seems to be not possible
| currently.
|
| - synthetic meat grown in a lab gets rid of a lot of CO2
| issues associated with cattle.
|
| So, the agriculture sector might look very different in a few
| decades. Plenty of new and exciting things happening.
| jbotz wrote:
| > Simply using nature to work for you...
|
| Most (by far) farmers practicing no-till aren't using
| nature to work for them, they are using chemistry...
| specifically herbicides, like glyphosate.
|
| That's not to say it's wrong; in a lot of cases using
| herbicides instead of tilling _is_ actually more
| sustainable... many soil types will degrade very fast with
| tillage, and while herbicides surely also have damaging
| effects (in terms of microbial composition, etc), the
| evidence so far suggests strongly that tillage is worse.
| cjrp wrote:
| I don't think chemical fertiliser is a solution to
| overfarming; it's a way of increasing yield. Although I guess
| that could be what you mean by overfarming? The yield per
| hectare should be whatever is naturally sustained?
| luckydata wrote:
| as a person that worked in farming analytics I can promise you
| the average farmer makes tons of mistakes of that kind because
| either lack of knowledge or planning.
| anonu wrote:
| If you're making the case that heavy farm machines reduce soil
| function, why would you throw the sauropod analogy into the mix
| to complicate things? I guess it would be a bland paper without
| that bit...
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, it is NOT just the pressure/surface area (which does apply
| to the top layers of the soil), but the total weight supported by
| the soil (which compacts the also-critical deeper soil layers).
|
| This is just one of the problems of massive monoculture farming.
|
| It is insanely destructive and unsustainable.
|
| On a recent-ish trip to the midwest US, driving away from the
| airport/city seemed lovely as the landscape turned rural. Then,
| it started to get really troubling as we'd realize that the
| fields were so endless and unbroken, creating vast areas with
| essentially zero habitat for anything other than the farmed crop
| - from the lowly soil fungi to top predators - nothing. In many
| ways, far more unnatural than many paved cities.
|
| Elon Musk and his ilk are 100% wrong about the "need" to continue
| increasing human population. We survive literally by extracting
| yields from the excess carrying capacity of the biosphere. At
| some point, we _can_ exceed that capacity, and the result will be
| collapse.
|
| This will occur like with any other population that outgrows its
| resources - arriving at a state where the population's needs
| exceed resources by 10-20% does not result in 10-20% deaths, but
| 80-90%, because the shortage is spread throughout the entire
| population - they don't just say "we're 10% over so you 10% take
| one for the team and die this month, sorry", but everyone is
| undernourished to the point of unsurvivability.
|
| This is merely one example of how the entire system is unstable.
| 317070 wrote:
| > "we're 10% over so you 10% take one for the team and die this
| month, sorry"
|
| While it is indeed not entirely like that, it does come a lot
| closer to the truth than you would expect (and it has always
| done that).
|
| In the 18th century when France did not have enough food,
| almost everybody was worse off, but most people were not
| actually hungry, they just paid more for the food they ate.
|
| Because inequality is so big and following a power-law (as you
| go closer to the top, people have exponentially more) the
| prices go up a little until demand of the top x% is met, and
| the bottom x% cannot pay and goes hungry until starvation. And
| because of the exponential difference, the bottom will starve
| while the top will actually notice very little. There is a
| group in the middle between those extremes that has trouble
| paying more and goes undernourished, but it's not actually that
| large of a group. The larger the inequality is, the smaller the
| group in the middle.
|
| Think about how many people in the US will go hungry because of
| the worldwide wheat shortage as compared to some African
| countries. The small price difference will be barely noticeable
| in the US, a country which adds on tons of other value by
| turning the wheat into salmon bagels in a complex process. But
| these price differences are huge for many African countries,
| which only grind the wheat and mix it with water.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, inequality does indeed mean that the shortfall is not
| fully evenly distributed, and the rich and well-off would be
| fine for quite while.
|
| But I'm not talking about collapses in the range of
| economics, but more of a collapse of a food chain, with no
| real replacements. This would behave much more like
| populations of, for example, deer, when they overbreed
| substantially past the carrying capacity of their range, and
| the range is constrained by geographic barriers (so migration
| is not an option). In that situation, populations often
| collapse 80%, even with only a technically 10% shortfall,
| because every individual gets too little to survive for too
| long, so expires.
|
| Your point about inequality and stored capacity in human
| economies is well taken and certainly applies in the case of
| 1-2 year crop failures or events like the Russian assault on
| Ukraine and its grain production & export capabilities.
|
| If we lose key components of the food web such as
| pollinators, phytoplankton, forests, etc., economics will
| play a role, but I doubt we'd get to the point of 'we're 10%
| short so you 10% starve in the next 50 days and the rest of
| us are fine'. Sure only about 9% of the world lives in
| extreme poverty of less than the equivalent of $1.90/day [1],
| but I'd be astonished if the losses would be constrained to
| that class. I'd expect it to immediately affect everyone in
| the 'ordinary poverty' category of $5.50/day, which was 43.5%
| in 2017 [2]. And frankly, it's probably be a lot more.
| Sustained famine over 50-80% of the population will kill a
| lot more than 10-20% of the population, even if the actual
| shortfall is only 10-20%
|
| [1] https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-
| stories/global-... [2]
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/poverty-rate
| low_common wrote:
| Haha PENIS!
| js290 wrote:
| dczx wrote:
| Interesting
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| I think one of the reasons to get bigger and bigger is to save
| human time.
|
| If we get to a place where it's all AI, is there a chance that
| many smaller machines will become more effective than a few
| enormous ones?
| usrusr wrote:
| There's also the trade-off between width of the worked area and
| the treaded surface made unusable for the season. If you have
| any tractor work steps between seeding and harvesting, you want
| all those runs done in exactly the same tracks to minimize
| waste.
|
| A "small robots" revolution might still come, on the coat-tails
| of agrovoltaics: if/when someone in the right position begins
| thinking the panel scaffolding as dual use, doubling as a "rail
| network" for robotic tools. I believe this could become a
| feature of agrovoltaics installations as unremarkable as
| overhead cranes on factory floors.
| hommelix wrote:
| This is the idea of controlled traffic. Use the same track
| over and over again to not compact the soil where the plants
| grow. An example of a large machine doing so is the Nexat.
| There are videos on youtube and some detail on their website
| https://www.nexat.de/controlled-traffic-farming/
|
| Going larger there increase the percentage of growing soil vs
| track soil.
| tda wrote:
| I would think so. There is a lot going on in this area, see
| e.g. https://pixelfarmingrobotics.com/robot-one/ and
| https://www.odd.bot/
| TomJansen wrote:
| Doesn't the economy of scale teach us that one big apparatus
| is cheaper than many smaller ones?
| danaris wrote:
| The soil doesn't care how much it costs.
|
| Stop thinking with your wallet; our times demand a more
| holistic approach.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Scale is not size.
| jessaustin wrote:
| "Economy of scale" is not a universal law as CEOs (and some
| economists) like to pretend.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| That first one is incredible and the second looks like a more
| cost effective option. Most don't realize that organic
| farming isn't pesticide free but this gives farmers that
| option without resorting to hand-weeding.
| bluGill wrote:
| In fact no. Bigger heavy machines do less damage than smaller
| ones overall. You have to look at the whole field, not just
| where the tires touch. Where the tires touch the ground the
| heavy machine is worse, but the smaller machines touch the
| ground in a lot more places and so do more damage.
|
| Farmers are now using GPS to ensure all the tires that touch
| the field drive exactly the same place every pass, every year.
| Where the tires touch the ground is hardly worth farming, but
| the rest of the ground is undisturbed and so much healthier.
| dahart wrote:
| > smaller machines touch the ground in a lot more places an
| so do more damage.
|
| That's certainly possible but not a given, and I think the
| somewhat obvious implicit suggestion was to use smaller
| machines with a lower weight to surface area ratio, no?
| Damage isn't a function of how many places the ground is
| touched at all, it's only a function of weight per unit area.
|
| Is it possible we could design small robots that weigh less
| per unit area than the large tractors? Sure, why not? We
| could have smaller machines with bigger tires, we could
| design machines with weight reducing features like
| propellers, we can choose to use lighter weight materials &
| designs for machine frames & engines. It seems like there a
| plenty of possibilities that are not in fact impossible.
| bluGill wrote:
| The function multiples weight by a very small factor
| though, so area dominates. (I have no idea what the
| function is, I've just had conversations with soil experts
| who tell me this)
| dahart wrote:
| What area? What weight? We need specifics in order to
| make claims one way or the other. It's not just possible,
| but easy to design machines with lower weight to surface
| area ratio, so it's just wrong to conclude the answer to
| the question can do we better is somehow no.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can get a phd answering this question, something I do
| not have. What I have done is talk to such phd's - 5
| years ago. I'm not giving more details because I don't
| remember more. I remember this much because it stood out
| to me as so non-obvious.
| ratsmack wrote:
| On our farm we would use an attachment called a ripper. It was a
| series of blades that would reach down 18 to 20 inches to break
| up the soil. Behind each blade was a 3.5 inch diameter bullet
| shaped slug (called a mole) that would create an underground
| tunnel, not unlike what an actual mole creates. We grew carrots,
| so it was imperative that soil compaction was limited or it would
| stunt the length of the carrots.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| I read this "research" and the quality is laughable. Farmers,
| paleontologists and soil researchers will all find hilarious
| passages that make it seem like a high school project.
| flybrand wrote:
| Yes! It read like a 'Fake Invisible Catastrophe and Threat of
| Doom.'
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Example of Gell-Mann Amnesia?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Fun and interesting question though. Im glad they published
| something.
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