Today's Giant Farm Vehicles Threaten 20% of the World's Cropland (interestingengineering.com) 140
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: In 1958, a combine carrying a full load of freshly harvested crops might weigh 8,800 pounds (4000 kg). Today, a fully loaded combine can clock in at 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg). The story of increasingly large farm vehicles isn't necessarily bad. The invention of these huge machines -- along with advances like new fertilizers and genetically modified crops -- mean that today's farmers can grow far more food than ever before. But there's reason to worry that equipment manufacturers have begun pushing the envelope too far. In a paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS, researchers show that farm equipment has grown so large that its heft can damage the soil that lies more than 20 inches (0.5 m) below the surface.
It's been obvious for a long time that the weight of farm vehicles driving over fields causes the upper layers of soil to compact. Engineers have mitigated this by putting progressively bigger tires on heavier farm vehicles. They've also used more flexible materials that make it possible to inflate the tires to lower pressure. Those changes increase the amount of surface area contact between the vehicle and the ground. These measures have enabled engineers to build larger and larger vehicles without increasing the amount of contact stress on the upper layers of soil.
It's not just the upper layers of soil that farmers need to worry about. In their analysis, the researchers found that "subsoil stresses under farm vehicles have affected progressively deeper soil layers over the past six decades." In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, farm vehicles weren't heavy enough to compress soil below the level that's tilled each year. But that's no longer the case. Pressure from tractors, combines, and other pieces of equipment "has now penetrated deeper into the subsoil, thus potentially affecting untilled crop root zones," the authors write. Those layers of subsoil may be hidden from view, but they play an important role in what happens at the surface. The researchers say the consequences can combine to result in "a persistent decline in crop yields." This isn't a niche problem either. According to the researchers, "The fraction of arable land that is presently at high risk of subsoil compaction is about 20% of global cropland area, concentrated in mechanized regions in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia."
They say the issue could be addressed if "future agricultural vehicles [are] designed with intrinsic soil mechanical limits in mind to avoid chronic soil compaction."
It's been obvious for a long time that the weight of farm vehicles driving over fields causes the upper layers of soil to compact. Engineers have mitigated this by putting progressively bigger tires on heavier farm vehicles. They've also used more flexible materials that make it possible to inflate the tires to lower pressure. Those changes increase the amount of surface area contact between the vehicle and the ground. These measures have enabled engineers to build larger and larger vehicles without increasing the amount of contact stress on the upper layers of soil.
It's not just the upper layers of soil that farmers need to worry about. In their analysis, the researchers found that "subsoil stresses under farm vehicles have affected progressively deeper soil layers over the past six decades." In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, farm vehicles weren't heavy enough to compress soil below the level that's tilled each year. But that's no longer the case. Pressure from tractors, combines, and other pieces of equipment "has now penetrated deeper into the subsoil, thus potentially affecting untilled crop root zones," the authors write. Those layers of subsoil may be hidden from view, but they play an important role in what happens at the surface. The researchers say the consequences can combine to result in "a persistent decline in crop yields." This isn't a niche problem either. According to the researchers, "The fraction of arable land that is presently at high risk of subsoil compaction is about 20% of global cropland area, concentrated in mechanized regions in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia."
They say the issue could be addressed if "future agricultural vehicles [are] designed with intrinsic soil mechanical limits in mind to avoid chronic soil compaction."
OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:4, Insightful)
We have so many real things to fear monger over and we get this shit?
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:2)
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Because media needs to earn a living.
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Something that decreases food production isn't something to be concerned with? The world is a complicated place. It is possible to handle more than one thing at a time, unlike you.
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It doesn't all have to be about outrage.
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RTFA. The problem they were aware of and took steps to correct was compaction of the top layers of soil, not the deeper layers affected by even heavier equipment.
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Even worse yet- while there is a rush to larger farm vehicles on one end of the spectrum, there's a rush to smaller and less invasive farm vehicles on the other end. We're beginning to enter the drones-and-robots era of weeding and spraying, which means between initial tilling and harvest, most farm vehicles will be either no contact or minimal contact with the ground.
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Even worse yet- while there is a rush to larger farm vehicles on one end of the spectrum, there's a rush to smaller and less invasive farm vehicles on the other end. We're beginning to enter the drones-and-robots era of weeding and spraying, which means between initial tilling and harvest, most farm vehicles will be either no contact or minimal contact with the ground.
This is my hope too, but it's hard to imagine the gigantic farms on the prairie using small drones. They'll use autonomous robots but probably giants. But I do think agricultural robotics will work extremely well for smaller farms or terrain that isn't flat. It might also make it more viable for small farmers to compete with giant farms, on a manpower basis. Tough to know though.
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:5, Informative)
Many farmers do deep tillage, yes. Deep tillage is quite common in my area. However that has its own problems including making loose soil more prone to erosion and also damaging the structure of the soil. And it takes a lot of fuel. 600 horsepower to full a 30' wide ripper around here.
One method to address soil compaction is called controlled-traffic farming. All farm machines have to be compatible widths so that the tractors drive on the same tracks exactly year on year. Ironically this is one of the drivers behind the ever increasing size of machines. In some areas planting equipment now requires 600 hp to pull and is 100 ft wide. Harvesting equipment in such areas can be as wide as 50ft (half the width of the seeder). Australia does more controlled-traffic farming than any other country I know of.
Another method of addressing compaction is to use certain kinds of cover crops that put down deep roots that open up the soil. To me this is one of the most interesting ideas being researched and experimented with. Tillage in general destroys soil structure, so anything that can avoid tillage is a good thing in my book. Also there's research being done into why plants won't put roots through compacted soil. It's not that the plant cannot do it. It's that somehow compacted soil causes the roots to put out certain hormones which turns the roots away from the compacted soil. Obviously for good survival reasons, but if we could control that and convince plants to do it anyway, that could really help!
I don't hear much about soil compaction out of Europe, at least like I do in North America. Definitely smaller tractors and combines has something to do with that! If I could afford to hire people to run more small tractors (and afford the small tractors!) I'd probably do that rather than go huge.
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One method to address soil compaction is called controlled-traffic farming. All farm machines have to be compatible widths so that the tractors drive on the same tracks exactly year on year.
This makes a lot of sense actually. Maybe even pave where the tires make contact so that the rolling resistance is minimized? It would take less horsepower to pull along the equipment if the tires were on firm pavement. This could probably be accomplished with minimal footings and poured in place concrete.
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever seen people that pour concrete into two strips up to their garage from the street instead of a large concrete pad for a driveway? I have. It works fine for a few years but then eventually they crack up, sink and heave from freeze and thawing, they tilt, get buried from sand and leaves blowing over them, and on and on. They simply don't stay in place. Given the cost of concrete I can't imagine it being practical to pour concrete tracks in the fields. That is assuming they stay in place and remain useful for many years. Given that they'd likely break up fairly quickly the maintenance costs have to be a problem.
Perhaps someone might think steel rails, like done for a train, would be more practical. There's a lot of preparation done on the road bed to keep the rails from moving, and they still have to put work crews out to move the rails back in place as they creep out of line over time. This is practical for trains because it is a lot of cargo moving all the time over those rails. In a field they'd be used something like a half dozen times each season, and for the rest of the year you have wind, rain, snow, and roots growing under them, to move them around.
If the crops are rotated then the tracks the tractor follows will likely move each season. The field is plowed up and the farmer lays out the tracks with the planter.
As I recall the planter set the "rules" for the equipment that followed that season. At first I recall we had an 8 row corn planter which meant the largest harvester could be 8 rows. If someone tried to used a 12 or 16 row harvester then the spacing could be off too much for the cutter head and a lot of the crop would be lost. We had a single row harvester, then a two row harvester, and maybe a four row harvester, all pulled behind the tractor. I say "maybe" on the four row harvester since I don't recall that being around long, it may have been rented. Then one day my brothers and I convinced Dad that buying a combine harvester would be a good idea, that was a "small" (for the time) 8 row harvester. We kept the two row harvester even after we got the combine. My guess is this was a backup in case the combine was out of service too long, and it meant two people could be harvesting at the same time if time was running short.
Before we had our own combine Dad would hire someone to "open the field" with a combine. That meant harvesting that corn around the edges of the field, and some paths through the middle, so the tractor could pull the harvester, which had a picker head off to the side, without driving over any corn.
Later on with a "huge" 16 row planter we could still use the 8 row combine harvester, the 4 row pulled harvester, and hire a 16 row combine to save on time.
I found out later that the "corn head" and the "bean head" were not their precise names. The "head" is a detachable implement on the front of the combine harvester that were built for harvesting different crops. The "corn head" was optimized for corn and if it was used for anything other than corn then I haven't seen that happen. The "bean head" wasn't just for cutting soybeans but was also for wheat, and some other crops. It was a "universal head" according to John Deere. People can use these "universal" heads for corn if one wasn't too picky on how the stalks were processed, and if there is a mismatch on the planter row spacing for the corn head. This might happen if someone has a 16 row harvester picking corn planted with 4 rows. The row spacing isn't an issue then, but there may be the stalks cut lower than one might like, a bit more corn lost in the separator, and so on.
All of that to say the wheels will not always travel between the same two rows. If the farmer is in a hurry, or there's some mechanical issue with the corn harvester, then the "universal" head comes out and the rows are largely ignored. The farmer may even come at the rows sideways, for some reason or another.
I noticed the critical planting and harvesting implements were "doub
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There's probably a multitude of engineering & practical problems that'd need to be ironed out but I like the idea of permanent tracks in the fields. How about longer, thinner fields, with hedgerows between to support wildlife, bees, etc.,
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> Have you ever seen people that pour concrete into two strips up to their garage from the street instead of a large concrete pad for a driveway? I have. It works fine for a few years but then eventually they crack up, sink and heave from freeze and thawing, they tilt, get buried from sand and leaves blowing over them, and on and on. They simply don't stay in place.
That is a case of the wrong tool for the usecase. There should have been "Grey Grass Concrete Paver Tiles" (works in google search, had to tr
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I'm sure that there's better way to resolve this but you will end up with tracks in the field that will interfere with the planting and harvesting. If this is to work out then I'd expect more than something from a couple randos on the internet.
People have been dealing with this for a long time, if tracks in the field made any sense then someone must have thought of something by now.
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That would make sense if I had even pontificated on the positive effects of nuclear radiation for power generation.
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Yes, indeed, in the olden days.
Today they do things better. They don't need me telling them what to do. They certainly don't need you telling them what to do..
I can give some recollections of how things were done in "ye olden daze" which may or may not have some relevance to today.
I'm seeing people give suggestions on how to improve things, suggestions that are quite obviously nonsense to someone that was responsible for raking the hay, milking the cows, and shoveling the shit.
I've seen promises for fully
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Tractor tires get way more traction on dirt than concrete! And really you'd gain nothing by paving the tire tracks. Dirt works just as well and requires no maintenance.
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It's called a subsoiler (Score:2)
Subsoiler or a ripper. Basically a 3 foot deep plow with at most two shares on it. It takes a lot of grunt to pull it through the soil but it breaks up any compacted layers. Also used to attack clay pans.
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What if they use longer/deeper plows (don't know if that's the correct name) to try and restore the soil?
If you want healthier soil, you shouldn't be plowing at all.
No-till farming [wikipedia.org]
My mom has been operating her farm as no-till for 15 years. Less erosion, less energy, less work, better yields. She says she will never use a plow again.
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What if they use longer/deeper plows (don't know if that's the correct name) to try and restore the soil?
Nope. Soil is laid down in layers and you can't just dig deep and mix it all up.
Soil damage is a very real thing, this should be taken seriously.
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OH RIGHT, we do have that technology. It's called herbicide resistant crops. Instead of tilling you can plant herbicid resistant crops and then kill the weeds and top cover using that herbicide, thus not having to disturb the soil with tilling. Lack of tilling means lack of soil nutrient loss due to run-off exacerbated by tilling
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A lot of farmers are starting to not plow. There is a lack of topsoil in the US, enough so that a new dust bowl might not be too far fetched.
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Right, because more regulations are always the solution. How about we get the USDA to stop recommending self destructive behaviors first? Seems like that would be a solid first step and it doesn't even require "regulations"
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On a technical point, why not reduce the weight and use a swarm of rotors to harvest from above, like a sky crane but with many rotors? Seems like that would be the least impa
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes (tens of) years for the soil to heal. From there everything mothballs on:
If the yields drop using big machines, bigger machines might allow for the same financial equilibrium as before (basically less diesel burned per acre).
If your yield starts dropping, and you go for smaller machines, you immediately get even lower yields (slightly) for a lot more invested work.
This is a case where lower yields/higher cost now could prevent an even worse situation in the future, but our economy and human mind is unable to account for this. (Look up discounting the future)
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If the yields drop because of larger equipment, won't farmers opt for smaller equipment, or...
Maybe, if that's economically feasible for them and they're aware of the problem. So much of the time though we use these kinds of products on faith, just assuming that they wouldn't be sold if they were harmful.
I'm staring at a monitor most of my day, every day. If my monitor were slowly damaging my eyesight then that would effect my productivity over time, not to mention my more general health and happiness, and I would be better off buying a different monitor. But would I know it? Definitely not. I ha
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:5, Insightful)
why do we need regulations?
Because far too many people don't give a fuck about the future and only want short-term profits today.
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:2)
You're just assuming the gov knows what the future holds AND what's best. Yeah, I'd like to challenge those assumptions.
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did their tire pressure change? (Score:2)
If the tire pressure is the same then the pressure in the soil is the same ( mostly). Doesn't matter how much the vehicle weighs
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Re: did their tire pressure change? (Score:2)
Profoundly wrong logic (Score:2)
I did not say the basil pressure of an unloaded tire. I said the tire pressure. Which is the pressure when loaded. As a first order approximation we assume the tires are not runflats and so the tire wall provides negligible contribution to the support. Whatever the loaded tire pressure is, is going to be the pressure on the ground (mostly).
Have these changed much? To be specific have they changed ten fold? I don't know but I'd guess not.
The point of the article then that the contact area has increased
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If the tire pressure is the same then the pressure in the soil is the same ( mostly). Doesn't matter how much the vehicle weighs
No! Absolutely false. The pressure on the ground is the weight of the vehicle divided by the total area of the contact surface, provided all the tires are each at the same pressure, then an equal fraction of the vehicle's weight is pressing down at each point along the contact surface, But the steady pressure exerted down on the ground is due to the gravitational force acting
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Regulations need to be enacted to force crop rotation and end corn ethanol.
Why is it that every problem needs more regulation? If something is such a great idea then why would we need the force of government to make it happen?
I believe farmers have far more interest in preserving the future productivity of their land than any government official. I believe farmers have more knowledge in preserving the productivity of the land as well. The government may have a role here in research on the best practices and in educating the farmers but the day to day choices of how to operate a
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I believe farmers have far more interest in preserving the future productivity of their land than any government official. I believe farmers have more knowledge in preserving the productivity of the land as well.
Farmers are often just trying to survive from one year to the next, and often are just doing what those before them did. Never underestimate the ability of an industry trend to lead huge masses of people down a self-destructive deadend, particularly if the worst consequences won't really be felt for years.
The difference with farming is, if farming fails, everybody starves. There's no resource that's simultaneously so important and so easily damaged as the soil.
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But if the farmer grows corn, and only corn, and rotates with crop with corn, he's going to end up wtih pretty bad soil and resistant pests after awhile, and increased reliance of artificial fertilizers. But this monoculture is good in the short term for the farmer; higher yields, fewer costs, more profit. so just like corporations, farmers end up hurting in the long run by focusing on short term profits.
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> I believe farmers have far more interest in preserving the future productivity of their land than any government official ... Market forces will give a guiding hand on what crops need to be planted.
I agree for farmers. But corporations can decide that for one of their entities, short term gains are better than the costs of retooling and the losses due to soil recovery and investments in long term sustainability, and so decide to continue on its current path and further increase yields, damage the soil
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Since when has "no regulation" been tried in farming at any point in the last 150 years?
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Regulations need to be enacted to force crop rotation
Why? Farmers already rotate when it makes sense. Do you really think bureaucrats know better than farmers?
and end corn ethanol. We should have enacted a hydrogen economy
There are few things that are more idiotic than corn ethanol subsidies, but the "hydrogen economy" is one of them.
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Regulations need to be enacted to force crop rotation
Why? Farmers already rotate when it makes sense. Do you really think bureaucrats know better than farmers?
Yep, because farmers always know what's best for the land. That's why we get things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: OH MY GOD FARM VEHICLES ARE TOO BIG!* (Score:2)
Since the dust bowl there has been 100 years of government outreach and education. And there actually are soil health and erosion control plans you have to be enrolled in to take part in government programs. Virtually no modern farm of any scale today would go without an agronomist either on staff or contract, and they manage things like soil sampling to accurately apply nutrients and inform the farmer of current "best practice" including cost calculations to switch practices. Shit anymore its not unusual t
and the dupe (Score:2)
20% of the World's Bitcoin Supply Threatened by Giant Crypto Mining Rigs
Not Slashdot-y enough without the dupe.
So treads not tires ... (Score:2)
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use drones (Score:3)
harvest an ear of corn at a time, but with 1000 drones doing it day and night. It will seem high tech, but it will actually be very stupid.
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Make the drones run on corn. They digest every 3rd ear of corn they pick and it could work
Up until they learn that humans provide a more energy-dense food source, at least.
Free Fertilizer!!! (Score:2)
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But - but - but - (Score:2)
We need bigly tractorz to haul off the Russian tanks!
That's not why tires are getting bigger (Score:3)
Yes but... (Score:2)
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Heat death of universe is also soon, so why worry indeed.
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Rice grows OK underwater. We just need to cross corn with rice to let us flood the fields in the summer.
This will be a problem for electric vehicles. (Score:2)
There is a problem with soil compaction now when farm tractors are powered by diesel engines, what happens when people try battery powered farm tractors?
It's too bad we had alcohol prohibition when we did because it was about that time we were first seeing bio-mass fuels being experimented upon. Farmers were distilling their own ethanol for fuel and had that experiment been allowed to continue then we'd have far more data on the viability of bio-mass fuels. I'm not saying that I believe bio-mass fuels are
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Solar can be built in deserts so it doesnt compete with crops for land.
Solar can be put in deserts but that doesn't mean it is not competing with food for land. We have turned deserts to cropland by irrigation. Even without irrigation we can turn desert into productive land. Here's a talk by someone that has demonstrated that introducing grazing animals we can turn desert into grasslands: https://www.ted.com/talks/alla... [ted.com]
What is a nation to do if they don't have any deserts for solar power? I assume they can import it from someplace that has more sun. What happens if ther
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Solar can be put in deserts but that doesn't mean it is not competing with food for land.
No, you're right; agrivoltaics means that solar is not competing with food for land.
So can any energy source. Your point?
Presumably his point was that it's easiest to do that with PV solar, since 1) it's already DC (no conversion losses or conversion equipment costs), and 2) the marginal costs are pretty much the lowest nowadays.
It is trivial to convert a diesel engine to run on ammonia
This is pretty much one of the few good ideas you've ever had here, since ammonia is already being used in agriculture anyway, so you're just getting rid of a redundant tank for fuel.
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No, you're right; agrivoltaics means that solar is not competing with food for land.
Having solar PV and crops share the same land means a farmer having to chose to optimize for crop yield or electric yield. With the electricity being even more intermittent as the panels are moved to sun or shade the crops, and therefore the electricity produced being even more expensive than nuclear.
I'm seeing a trend with people planning to integrate thermal energy storage into nuclear power plants which means nuclear power will better integrate with agrivoltaics, storing up excess output as heat for pro
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Or we need to scale down humanity one way or another:
- Decrease resources use per capita
- Decrease population
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50 million lives are prematurely ended every single year on this planet via abortion. That's more than any war or disease has ever brought upon the human race, and yet we actually need more.
If you're actually counting from fertilization which is where the anti-abortion types want to, then many, many times that many die every year from simply failing to implant or failing to become viable in various ways. If you count all of those together, more fertilized eggs die than there are babies born every year without even bringing abortion into it at all. So trying to impress people with half a brain with the numbers on abortion is ridiculous.
The way to reduce abortion is the same that it has always b
Interesting (Score:2)
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Why - because they're going to start crushing their own fields with stolen equipment?
topsoil (Score:2)
its heft can damage the soil that lies more than 20 inches (0.5 m) below the surface.
So who cares about substrate soil that deep?
If we learned anything from the Dust Bowl, we know it is the topsoil, less than the top 20", that is important.
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The topsoil is where the nutrients live. The deeper part is where the water goes so the topsoil doesn't erode away during a heavy rain.
Use more axles (Score:2)
with more wheels to distribute the load. Or even use tracks.
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Tracks become impractical once you start to get big. They're OK in straight lines but turning is a problem.
Maybe something could be made that uses tracks in straight lines but has wheels that come down for turning around and driving it up to the field.
Re: Use more axles (Score:2)
so I don't understand (Score:2)
The summary implies that ground pressures have NOT increased because contact patch sizes have increased proportionally to weight.
So how do bigger, more massive vehicles with the SAME pressure per square area cause deeper compaction issues than say, a smaller vehicle?
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The summary implies that ground pressures have NOT increased because contact patch sizes have increased proportionally to weight.
No, it implies that they haven't increased enough.
Wider tires mean more land wasted so I'm guessing they're not popular among people who are after maximum profit per acre.
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In fact, they don't say that at ALL.
"These measures have enabled engineers to build larger and larger vehicles without increasing the amount of contact stress on the upper layers of soil. "
WITHOUT INCREASING.
My question is how can deep-soil shear stress increase when you're NOT increasing the per-unit-area weight?
Logically extrapolated (I know ground pressure isn't exactly the same as buoyancy but it's kind of like it) this would mean that keeping the same buoyancy, you could eventually build a supertanker
grow more pot (Score:2)
So that's what happened to Tatooine! (Score:2)
Those huge sandcrawlers were originally harvesters.
Pushing the envelope (Score:4, Funny)
But there's reason to worry that equipment manufacturers have begun pushing the envelope too far
No matter how far you push the envelope, Its still stationary.
Soil compaction not the only issue with "Big Ag" (Score:3)
I see a lot of comments saying "so what, big deal" to this news, but there is literally (to my mind) no bigger deal in existence, since we're talking about our ability to feed everyone being threatened.
Soil compaction is not the only issue with "Big Ag". Remember this story:
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
57 *Trillion* metric tons of topsoil is gone. If we keep using up the planet's lifeblood like that, we are literally committing murder-suicide.
The solution is not just smaller combines -- but a whole new approach: Regenerative Agriculture. It's happening, and hopefully is even happening fast enough for human civilization to get past 2035, which is good, since agricultural activity is a primary driver of climate change, though if we destroy all the topsoil, not only will we make climate change worse, but we may not even live to see the worst parts of climate change, since we'll run out of food and humanity will literally starve to death, presumably ending civilization "as we know it". On the other hand, building healthy soil SEQUESTERS CARBON! We don't need industrial-scale "geoengineering" projects to remove CO2 from the air: if we rebuild topsoil to preindustrial levels, we will (more or less) have solved climate change, and secured a future for humanity to boot.
This is one of many global advocacy organizations for saving the soil:
https://www.consciousplanet.or... [consciousplanet.org]
Okay, then make diesel fuel and labor cheaper (Score:2)
It's pretty simple economics. When the cost of labor and energy go up for bullshit reasons, people will find ways to circumvent attempts to artificially distort the market in order to stay in business. One might be forgiven for thinking that some people simply want less progress rather than more.
Subsoilers FTW (Score:2)
Farmers have had a tool to take care of subsoil compaction for decades. [compactoperator.com]
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Your link says that it can deal with soil compaction at double the depth of 15 to 20 cm. 40 cm may be deep enough, but it's not clear.
Tank treads? (Score:2)
Rather than tires, use a series of small wheels and a long tread wrapped around them like a tank. Distributes force across a wider area leading to less force applied in in any given area and thus less compaction.
FWIW these vehicles are already the weight of a tank.
Whales getting beached radiation underground... (Score:2)
I'm going to run around screaming Chicken Little for the rest of my days.
Did you know 100% of people on this Earth will eventually die? AAAA!
Dune (Score:2)
Really? You mean like Her Hitler can't use Tigers? (Score:2)
The larger the vehicle, the heavier the road. Hitler couldn't use Tiger tanks as he wanted in Europe, because they destroyed the roads.
And for all you idiots posting to slashdot, 80%? 90% of US farming IS NOT FARMERS, it's agribusiness, and they don't give a shit about farms, all they want is profits this quarter.
City people ... (Score:3)
City people learn of the term "soil compaction," and assume that because they just learned the term, that it's a new problem! And time to freak out! And decide that they, in their great all-knowing-ness will have to provide a legislative solution.
Soil compaction is decades old. Farmers are well aware of it. They know how to farm to minimize it. They know what to do if the problem gets too bad to reverse it. It's not new.
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The CO2 that comes out of "rollin' coal" is fertilizer for plants.
Put down the Brawndo. That black soot isn't "CO2", it's partially-combusted diesel particles and it actually is nasty for the environment. Now, you're right that I'm no expert on plants, but I'm pretty sure plants don't crave soot.
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Nor, for that matter, will the CO2 do shit for improving soil quality.
This whole "CO2 is plant food" thing is nonsensical. The amount of CO2 increase involved with climate change isn't enough to make any significant change in the plants respiration. It IS however enough to completely wreck the water table by increasing ocean level. Even a few inches of sea-level rise is enough to salinate the hell out of the water table and thus the soils. Couple that with increased variability in weather systems, unseasona
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Oceans were higher for the vast majority of earths existence. FYI. Ice on Earth's poles are a reoccurring rare phenomenon, geologically speaking. For most of the 4.5 billion years, there was no ice. Antartica used to have a forest on it until all but only 34 million years ago.
Indeed it does, however, the Earth usually changes over a much slower time period (geological time scales are fun) and things have time to adapt. We have inadvertently geo-engineered a change over a few hundred years, rather than a few thousand. This is not a good thing (TM). Also there's so many humans that we don't have the space and time to adapt ourselves!
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It was much more than 34 million years ago that Antarctica was warm and had widespread forests, and that's mostly because Antarctica wasn't at the south pole then. [coolantarctica.com]
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Humans weren't around for the vast majority of the Earth's existence.
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Yes. Primarily the parts of earth's existence that wasn't habitable to humans.
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It was, actually, but the OP is still an idiot for thinking that accelerating the return to that time in the name of quick profit is a good idea.
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In real world on the other hand, CO2 increase in atmosphere made significant change because while increase has been fairly small, it affected ALL plant life on the surface.
And we could really use more of this "havok", as ag has been more effective year after year, efficiency increasing by a couple of percentage points globally each year. It's one of the reasons we went from mass starvation of 2000s to mass obesity in 2020. The only starvation left on the planet is political, where there's a political confli
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Big ag relies on non-renewable resources. Phosphorus for fertilizer is dug up out of deposits, used once, and flushed out to sea. Same goes for water in a lot of places. It's "fossil water" that is pumped up from aquifers and depleted over decades while it took 1000s of years to accumulate.
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Why did you use "big" there? It's all modern agriculture that does that.
So that means you're advocating for going back to hunter-gatherer societies, population reduction of well in excess of 99.9% and mass starvation for those that remain due to incredible insecurity of food acquisition through those methods.
I would agree and volunteer you and those like you for it first. After you're gone, we can continue the modern existence, where children don't need to starve because environmentalist sociopaths want to