It is probably inevitable that our mental models are anchored by the limitations and constraints of the environment we grew up in.
We absorb those rules without any conscious effort. They are the unexamined, default rules we expect the universe to follow when we are 20, and 40 and 80 years-old.
My father carried slightly different rules in his head than I do. My children grew up in a different universe than I did so they internalized different rules and have different expectations than I do.
Production models
My Dad spent most of his younger years in rural, west-Michigan. Nearly all of his relatives were small-farmers with factory jobs. They worked eight-hours in the factory and then went home and drove tractors, raised cattle and hogs and tended gardens. That is what people did in the 1930s and 40s...if they were lucky enough to have a factory job.
He internalized the production model of a cow-calf operation. Money was not borrowed to buy heifers. The herdsman retained some percentage of his own heifers. The herdsman might have a bull that he loaned out to other herdsman for a fee or he might pay a neighbor with a bull to impregnate his cows.
A typical mama cow might produce five calves in her lifetime. That means that 20% of them needed to be replaced every year. Since half of the calves were bull-calves, that meant the herdsman needed to retain 40% of his heifer calves to keep his herd size the same.
If he were attempting to double the size of his productive herd and kept all of his heifer calves, simple math suggests that his herd would grow 30% per year...BUT...in 1935 he would not breed those heifer calves until they were 27 months old. Basically he would have to carry them for three years (27 months + 9 months gestation) before they produced their own calves.
If he were attempting to double the sales receipts from his herd, the breakdown looks like this:
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| 100 cows would have been a huge herd in Michigan in 1935. That number was chosen for ease of visualization. |
In year zero, before he decided to expand he was selling 80 calves with expenses for a total of 140 animals, 100 cows old enough to have calves PLUS the 40 replacement heifers in the pipeline.
In year two of his expansion he is selling fewer calves because he is retaining every heifer for herd growth so while the number of animals he has to care for has doubled, his receipts dropped to 65% of what he collected before deciding to expand.
The sharp-eyed among you will notice that I am not tracking the sale of cull-cows. The reason is that cull-cows do not command nearly as much at auction as a feeder-calves and the operation spins relatively few cull-cows compared to the number of calves it produces. At current prices a 600 pound steer runs about $900 while a 1000 pound cull-cow might get $600 (historically half that).
Because of the slow scalability characteristics of beef-cows, it takes him sixteen years to double the number of calves he sells each year.
Note that it is NOT good husbandry to keep every heifer calf! If a calf has serious health problems, you do not want to keep it and allow those issues to proliferate in your herd. Sixteen years is an optimistic estimate of how long it would take to double the number of calves sold each year.
My kids
My kids came of age when it takes 3 years and $265 million to go from story-board to a new version of Grand Theft Auto that is debugged and validated for all platforms.
That investment is invisible to them. What they see are the two month advertising blitz before release and then they see near-infinite ability to scale the the user-base for the new game from zero to the entire planet in the matter of a few weeks.
That shapes the way their generation thinks.
"Agriculture totally craters? 40% of the farmers over the age of 65 go out of business? Truck-fleets sidelined. No problem. We can fix that in a few days. We have Apps!!!"
Very few examine their internalized model of scalability, a model founded on video game roll-outs and cloud-based music, and question whether it is applicable outside the world of software-downloads.
They may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Not to mention the current regime thinks that we should be eating bugs instead of beef . They also seem to be in total control of the election process . Something tells me their plan will hit a road block when guys like me can no longer buy a pack of hamburger . A pissed off patriot is bad . A hungry pissed off patriot is worse .
ReplyDeleteERJ, as even any window gardener and up has experienced, growing good - which are all living systems - is not a scalable activity like technology. It into only from the "more inputs do not inherently yield more outputs" side, but from the time factor side (as you point out). Even in my line of work (biotechnology), it takes x amounts of weeks to get a yield of drug substance. The process cannot be rushed. And even then, sometimes the odd or unexpected happens and suddenly the yield is decreased or even not present. This is one thing in the artificial environment of the bioreactor and column finishes; it is another thing entirely where a growing seasons comes once or perhaps twice a year and gestation takes X amount of months.
ReplyDeleteJohn William Gardner is credited with the phrase "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." The same can be true of agriculture: we have (as a society) scorned it too long as the preserve of the unknowledgeable and the unskilled. Having no appreciation for it, we are about to yield the fruit of those labors.
And that harvest will likely be a full and bounteous one.
You are right on ERJ, as usual. Also, I would add that the average age of a farmer in the US is 58, is 95% are white and Christian. And getting pissed. And unlike being a computer programmer a 4 year degree doesn't make you one. It is something most successful farmers have grown up doing and it takes years, and a mentor, to learn. If even a small percentage of them decide to sit out a year and just feed their family and community we are screwed. ---ken
ReplyDeleteAside from digital artwork and ornamentals, I don't keep production pipelines in mind. Cattle may take a long time to scale up but that means there is market space for other meat animals such as rabbit, goat, sheep (& deer if that will ever be legalized), which may scale faster. Reopening the slaughter houses for horses would certainly take some pressure off beef and pork. Scalability doesn't have to come from a single specialized source. I wouldn't mind having some axis deer and quail myself.
ReplyDeleteI can't comment on industrial agriculture other than it being largely automated these days. Yes, it does require software, GPS, and digital sensors in the fields, etc. There are fewer people but its higher skill than ever now. I'm on a smaller "hobby farm" without all the tech and we (family) are entertaining putting several acres back into production. If people paid the real cost of food in a free market then it would be profitable but there is no money in growing food without big government subsidies and control; a food shortage may change this. There is no shortage of land that can be brought into production within a years notice if agriculture crashes but it will be more localized production and I'm sure there will be plenty of apps to find and coordinate farmers markets, farms, etc, if they don't already exist. Scalability doesn't necessarily apply to farm land that is effectively on standby.
There are few excuses for not growing something. Even my grandparents grew plantains, tangerines, and blackberries, and that was in the city with a HOA. Test the soil and plant perennials if you have a city yard. For country people, in lieu of a soil test, native plants show precisely what the nature of the local soil is. The "Seek" app can help identify native plants and is a brilliant way to catalog exactly what grows across the entire country down to the foot.
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Most gamers are aware of the 3-6 year development cycle and developers keep fans updated. It's best to put a game out of mind until the hype train starts. I'm not sure what kind of games you are looking at but theses days they are far from debugged and optimized, rather are brute forced into running. It's often better to wait a few weeks after release and initial patching before getting a game these days. A lot of indie games are crowd funded now and the investment is quite visible.
Current generations are higher information than ever before and can entertain multiple solutions. Coordinating people or improving efficiency of existing resources is a common solution to many problems and often takes the form of an app. The bombardment of information and digital devices definitely helps shape the way current generations think but they aren't blind to reality or the old way of doing things. They may very well be better able to integrate production processes into more efficient and easier to manage packages.
Getting too long again, I'll cut it here.
-arc
Sir, you were born to blog.
DeletePoints about other animals scaling more quickly hit the nail squarely on the head. The most common meat in Continental Europe immediately after WWII was rabbit. THey can be fed herbage harvested from the verges beside the roads or from trimming cut from most species of trees or shrubs so they are not competing for human-quality food. Their reproductive ability is legendary.
The "sundowners" who worked in the factory 8 hours and then farmed valued cattle because they are sturdy and not bothered by stray dogs or coyotes. There is also a steady market for them.
Crisis agriculture will probably lean more toward cabbages than toward traditional field crops. You can eat most veges raw or with very simple prep. Most grains require more specialized prep to get them into a form that people are used to eating.
There will be few constipated people in a human-powered, vegetable fueled world.
-Joe
I'm pretty sure the folks running the show, especially the younger ones, believe a baby can be produced in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
ReplyDelete