When is the time to confront the elephant in the room ?

[Vader]

There is a point in my view. Hauling 10 tonnes of iron up and down a hill uses more diesel and squashes more air out of the ground than hauling 2 tonne of iron up and down a hill. Bigger isn’t always beautiful. And everybody is sat in council estates getting obese because they have nowt to do while Mr Big is wondering how he can get rid of another employee on £12 an hour by buying an even bigger machine for eleventy thousand pounds. Madness in my view.

But the dole lot sat around in the council estate won't work for a lot less than they getting for doing nothing.
£25,000 a year would not get some of them working as would be worse off than they are now...

 

[thesilentone]

The post is not to bring out hostility, it's in advance of what will come.

We have to change or be left behind by those that do.

At the moment, I get the feeling no one can give a bench-mark figure of what fuel/ton in used for the respective tasks, not a great start is it ?

 

[CopperBeech]

Thanks, and apologies if it's a bit hostile, i'm just really, really p!ssed off with how we have (not) been represented in the last 24 hrs.

Hostile you works. Go for it!

 

[Bury the Trash]

My son is working for a dealership this summer. The other day he had to deliver a combine header so he took a Fendt 939 when i asked why such a big tractor i was told ‘but it does 65kmh’ having spent hours at 16.8 mph on a Ford 4000 i’d go with the Fendt too.

Boy thats a huge extreme difference you quote
depends on context imo.
i would rather drive a 4000 ...
( not that it was ever my favourite tractor there is other lightweight 'classics, that would suit me better and maybe a few yrs newer with a quieter cab and ps. )
...that i owned and paid for and on my own farm business than work for someone else on a fancy fendt.
the thing is , if there is so many looking for a way into farming ? then surely they would agree with that .

bottom line is if you genuinely want to/ like,/ love to to farm keep stock ,grow things etc in there own right fancy glossy machines to ride around on arent quite the thing.

i took the op to mean theres far too much emphasis on getting bigger/ heavier /fancier kit (imo thats the Elephant in the room) where does that end .

 

[betweenthelines]

Farming is only responsible for about 10% of the UK's carbon emissions.

If farming halved it's carbon output (a massive task) it would make hardly any difference to the big picture

But if people were restricted as to how much non essential travel they undertook (holidays abroad, using own transport when public transport is available etc) and turned the boiler and the central heating down a degree every year?

The average car journey within the M25 is at less than 10 mph-and there are multiple means of public transport.

Anyone who lives in London and buys an electric car is seriously missing the point.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

The post is not to bring out hostility, it's in advance of what will come.

We have to change or be left behind by those that do.

At the moment, I get the feeling no one can give a bench-mark figure of what fuel/ton in used for the respective tasks, not a great start is it ?

It must be next to nothing because the digesters are hauling it miles and that's green energy

 

[C.J]

Apparently we are still coming out of the last ice age so prepare for things to get a lot hotter yet, humans or no humans, tractors or no tractors.

Well yes we are still in an Ice Age because we have polar ice caps.

Has it been warmer since the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago ?

Were the Holocene climatic optimums,the mayan warm period,the roman warm period and the medieval warm period warmer than our current climate ?

We don't know for sure because there were no accurate thermometers, But

The Vikings grew barley on Greenland and the Romans grew vines in the north of England.

As the glaciers retreat they leave archaelogical evidence of bronze age hunters (Langfonne) and ancient forests that grew at altitudes, that are to cold to grow to grow trees now.

Of course its been warmer than today , many times in the last 10,000 years - they were climate optimums.

 

[Hilly]

I can see why folk use bigger machinery. They have a lot to do with fewer staff but we still use an MF135 for most haymaking operations. The lightness and small scale are a joy to be honest. If you are in it for the personal experience and to tread lightly then small scale is the way to go. Just don’t expect a skiing holiday or a new Range Rover. I do like lightweight small scale farming. I really want to change my combine for a lighter smaller one. As a Jd1085 it’s a weighty beast. As steel doesn’t get stronger with size, you need more of it to make a bigger machine so weight problems increase disproportionately to horsepower and draft. I’d go back to 12m tramlines as well. Go lighter, go faster

Hmmm maybe the 135 uses more fuel per acre than big tractor with big Tedder ?

 

[Bury the Trash]

Shame we can't harness the 78% Nitrogen in the atmosphere better.(Legumes)

but we can/could harvest more of that with legumes ,its just easier quicker (and more cost effectiveunsure: )and trendy to use a lot artificially procured N .

 

[Bald Rick]

While we all puss about worrying about it, china rolls on. They will own everything by the end of the century. Get your kids learning Chinese and forget global warming.

And the ladies can be truly beautiful too.

 

[Bury the Trash]

And the ladies can be truly beautiful too.

looks like this threads gonna explode at some point better get ready to lock it
see below

read once that a forage wagon is far more fuel efficient at making silage, far better than a self propelled.

 

[N.Yorks.]

What a complete and utter load of bollox. There is nothing wrong our side of the farm gate.
1863. The year that manmade co2 emissions first overtook background natural emissions.
What has changed since 1863 ?
Farming ? Not really, its just cows chomping on grass and farmers growing crops.
The food chain ? Damn right. Hauling identical loaves of bread in opposite directions on motorways, refrigerators and lights running 24/7 in supermarkets, planning policies that force people to climb into a car to get so much as a pint of milk, landfill sites overflowing with packaging waste.
What is it with all this hand-wringing over farmings impact on the environment ? Grow some and start to tell the truth of it, it's the rest of the food chain needs to get its act together.

Not just that simple..... 1850 world population was 1.2 billion ........... 2011 world population was 7 billion. That's a big difference.

Farming in 2011 was not like farming in 1850. If it was the population may well not be where it is today as food would have been in short supply and getting more expensive therefore a limiting factor on humans.

I agree with your views on the food chain........

 

[7610 super q]

The post is not to bring out hostility, it's in advance of what will come.

We have to change or be left behind by those that do.

At the moment, I get the feeling no one can give a bench-mark figure of what fuel/ton in used for the respective tasks, not a great start is it ?

I could figure it out in half an hour probably. But how can I alter it ? I'm pretty frugal with my operations, but it all goes out the window when I get contractors in. They'd be peeved if I tell them to trade in their Fendts for a MF 135.........
Accepting grain at 16% would slash my fuel use, if anyone's interested.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Hmmm maybe the 135 uses more fuel per acre than big tractor with big Tedder ?

Then put a big tedder on it! Dad's neighbour runs 2 15 metre tedders on JD6630's covering about 40 acres and hour. Why would anyone use a 200+hp tractor for tedding?

 

[Dead Rabbits]

Energy is incredibly cheap at the moment. The entire modern world is built run and maintained on cheap abundant energy. So efficiently designing how we live and eat has never been a priority. When energy is no longer cheap and abundant we will see some significant changes. Until then it’ll mostly just be talk and ineffective action.

 

[capfits]

Unilever are going to be putting the carbon footprint on their products.

 

[Exfarmer]

My son is working for a dealership this summer. The other day he had to deliver a combine header so he took a Fendt 939 when i asked why such a big tractor i was told ‘but it does 65kmh’ having spent hours at 16.8 mph on a Ford 4000 i’d go with the Fendt too.

The dealer was negligent for not warning him to keep to the speed limit!

 

[Exfarmer]

my soil science lecturer (Mike Hann) used to rant about compaction from combines, he said if you really want to compact soil, do it when the soil is dry and use something heavy that vibrates and tyre pressure is altered by side wall strength, so no good saying only 10psi pressure

The side wall strength is nowhere the issue it was with the old 24 x 30 crossply wheels they used to use

 

[Ffermer Bach]

The side wall strength is nowhere the issue it was with the old 24 x 30 crossply wheels they used to use

I was in college 36 years ago!

 

[Bury the Trash]

The side wall strength is nowhere the issue it was with the old 24 x 30 crossply wheels they used to use

its weight the is the problem nothing more or less even fancy tires (or tracks) wont mitigate weight compaction effect on the soil somewhere , at all.

6 passes of a 135 and implement will cause less compaction than a quad track .

but even rainfall causes it tis true , and i guess a mans foot ...btw plants and hard frosts are the only things that can relieve it as well.