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Oxen (was Re: British Beef Situation)
>Bryan wrote:
>> Have you thought about the comparative ploughing capabilities of a
>> tractor and an oxen? Have you considered how many teams of MEN (I
>> speak generically) and oxen it would take to replace only the
>> tractors on say one 500 acre farm? Have you thought how much
Reasonably simple - an acre was defined as the ground ploughed by
one pair of oxen in one day. If you want to be done ploughing in
10 days, 50 pair of oxen, and 50 humans to dirve them.
We can't readily recreate a semi-subsistance economy out of a
cash economy - unless we remove much of the population. In 1870,
there were less than one billion (10 to the 9th) humans. Today there are
a lot more. There's the same amount of land.
We've dodged Dr. Malthus' bullet a lot, and God willing, we'll keep dodging.
But we can't just roll back the clock.
--
Henry Troup hwt@igs.net I am responsible for these opinions.
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