|
Post by SWMan on Mar 23, 2021 22:17:13 GMT -6
Niece asked this question today, city kid. I hadn't really given it much thought before because there is a few different angles one can take on this.
Curious what the responses would be from you guys before I share mine?
|
|
|
Post by northernfarmer on Mar 23, 2021 22:47:14 GMT -6
I would say within the last 100 years ( depending on how advanced one was back 100 years ago ) , going from livestock power to the age of the engine to till and harvest crops and the transportation of said crops which finding petroleum is a big part of. In the last 20 I would say GPS/electronics for more precise use of the seed/chemicals/fertilizer.
|
|
|
Post by meskie on Mar 23, 2021 22:48:12 GMT -6
In the last 100 years I’d have to say the machinery and the amount of acres one person can cover compared to 100 years ago.
In the last 20 I’d say the technology part of farming.
Damnit northern farmer you beat me to it.
|
|
|
Post by rod on Mar 24, 2021 4:14:57 GMT -6
In the last 100 years, undoubtedly the massive increase in efficiency & power of the internal combustion engine, has provided food security & wealth to millions of people worldwide. Yep, the same thing that some are trying to exclude from the world!
|
|
|
Post by Oatking on Mar 24, 2021 6:59:18 GMT -6
The invention of hydraulics in agriculture changed how we operate and also the plain old grain auger replacing the shovel. In the last 20 years its got to be the smart phone and the ability to sell grain from anywhere with that phone!
|
|
|
Post by cptusa on Mar 24, 2021 7:00:01 GMT -6
No doubt mechanization was the first wave then precision application the net wave. Autonomous operations will be the third wave.
Dad always said the 100 hp tractor was the down fall of modern farming. It allowed exponentially more work to be done in a day and once manufactures broke the 100 hp barrier engine power exploded after that. That's a lot like precision ag now, not many years ago swath control and auto steer were big news and now common place, but look how that industry has exploded in the last 10-15 years.
Can't not mention lighting too. Old lights were a mere candle to what we have now.
|
|
rcyung
Junior Member
Posts: 85 Likes: 87
|
Post by rcyung on Mar 24, 2021 7:37:07 GMT -6
Energy in it’s various forms. From horse power and human muscle to diesel, propane and natural gas. And let’s not forget the battery power of today’s cordless tools. All advances have made our lives a lot easier. Glyphosate. Quack grass and Canada thistle used to be our worst enemies. Now they don’t exist in our fields. It allowed us to eliminate summerfallow and has saved tons of topsoil and diesel.
|
|
jaymo
Full Member
Posts: 169 Likes: 76
|
Post by jaymo on Mar 24, 2021 7:54:23 GMT -6
My grandfather told me one of his best days of farming was when the last work horse left the farm!
|
|
|
Post by lanwickum on Mar 24, 2021 8:12:14 GMT -6
100 years, power. Electricity and fuel. Electricity in houses for water, heating, lights. Helped keep farmers from spending so much time tending to their houses. Fuel for engines to get more work done and not having to tend to horses. 20 years, wireless communication and gps. All boiling down to how much 1 person can farm.
Next will be automation of equipment. Tractors, combines, and vehicles. Just my prediction. I would give this 20 to 50 years of strong advancement. It will take a few generations to fully accept it.
A person could get a doctorates degree with this one question.
|
|
|
Post by torriem on Mar 24, 2021 8:34:37 GMT -6
As impressive as mechanization is, the most important agriculture innovation of the last 100 years is undoubtedly the Green Revolution. Norman Borlaug won a noble prize for spurring this. In a nutshell it's intensive agriculture using fertilizer, herbicides, and in some cases irrigation. Nowadays the "Green Revolution" is much maligned by people with modern woke sensibilities, and Borlaug demonized as an environmental destroyer. But the fact is a significant portion of the world's population would have starved to death without it. While not directly responsible for the waves of technical development over the last 70 years, it certainly made it all possible and deserves to be respected because of that. Back in the 50s, the common expectation was that most of India and Pakistan would starve to death in the coming decades. Now it's fashionable to apply revisionism to history and erase things from the past that may have been bad or even horrific. But that can't remove the fact that our current world situation would have been very different and not as good now had it not happened. The green revolution took hold earlier in Europe than it did here in Canada apparently. My neighbor immigrated to Canada in the early 70s to farm, and he was surprised that fertilizer was sold in 50 lb bags. He was the first farmer in my area to intensively apply fertilizer. He was also surprised that we didn't have many four-wheel drive tractors either, particularly tractors with front wheel assist. My grandfather has said similar things, jaymo . When he was 15 he'd catch, harness, and hook up I think it was 10 horses to a plow and pony drill, make five rounds around the field (some 300 acres in size) after which they'd refuse to go any farther. He'd water, feed, and rest them, and then five more rounds, and the day was done. He loved tractors and machinery, even though the first tractors were not much better than a horse. His father (my great grandfather) would complain to him that "at least the horses were always ready." My grandfather would retort that no they certainly were not always ready! They had to be caught, harnessed, fed, watered, rested. He loved that tractors would stay where you put them, start right up and work all day more or less. Thanks to tractors agriculture went from something that required 10% of the population or more to under 1%. This is good, but I fear that since so few people are growing food that the rest of the population has forgotten what it all means. In my lifetime the things that have advanced our farm the most are pivot irrigation (including high efficiency sprinklers and electric pumps) and GPS guidance and steering. We've come a long ways as we celebrate 100 years on my farm. Future advances for us will include variable-rate irrigation, which has more potential for us than variable-rate fertilizer. Also sub-surface irrigation could also be part of the next wave.
|
|
|
Post by kenmb on Mar 24, 2021 8:57:27 GMT -6
Was thinking similar to Torrie going through this. The first big change was the internal combustion engine to replace horses. This initiated the trend allowing a farmer to cover more acres with the same labor unit. Less time spent tending to the home, looking after his livestock to operate his farm equipment and such.
Once you cover more acres per labor unit, the next step is to get more output per acre. And so fertilizer and herbicides like removing quack grass to allow continuous cropping all increased production.
If those two are legitimate thoughts, then I suppose the third step will be to increase efficiency. More efficient labor use once your labor no longer expands over more acres and more efficient production once you hit a wall to how much production you can get off that acre. And I would say we are working quite a bit on that third step these days.
|
|
|
Post by northernfarmer on Mar 24, 2021 9:49:56 GMT -6
One has to wonder what the whole planet would look like had oil never been discovered, as that saying goes its the life blood of the industrial revolution and so many things around us never would have been possible. There would be no solar or wind power either, probably not even electricity in the vastness we have it available as it took oil to build and make that leap. No paved roads, no buildings as we know them, no fridge, and the list goes on and on.
My dad had said he was one of the first in this local area to spray crops for weeds which certainly increased yields, and fertilizer as well was not a thing back in the early days. I think it was into the 1950's at some point when we got electricity.
But that oil, if that never existed we would exist in such a different world and indeed I expect a vast majority of the population would be tied to the land in growing food for survival as had been the case for eons before, no such thing as the youth sitting on their ass scrolling on a smart phone but instead wearing rags and manually growing food with the use of livestock. Turn the clock back over 150 years and not have discovered oil, we might be living a life not much different from that time period.
|
|
|
Post by slipclutch on Mar 24, 2021 10:12:37 GMT -6
I remember when I was a kid when roundup came out. Wow that was awesome. obviously we use it too much today. But if it wasn’t for roundup most farmers would be broke today.
|
|
|
Post by snapper22 on Mar 24, 2021 12:12:15 GMT -6
My grandfather told me one of his best days of farming was when the last work horse left the farm! Henry Ford said he got into building tractors because as a kid on the farm he hated staring at horses asses.
|
|
|
Post by torriem on Mar 24, 2021 12:50:11 GMT -6
Interesting thing about work horses. My grandfather's work horses could auto steer decades before GPS. The horses could pull the plow and drill down the length of the field, right next to the previous pass, without any input from the driver and even could make the turn at the end by themselves. My great grandfather would tie a lantern to the machine he was riding on so he could see a bit, and would plow and plant at night sometimes. He'd doze off as the horses made their pass, then he'd wake up to pull the plow out of the ground and get lined up for the next pass, and then doze off again.
And they could even count the passes. They'd do five passes and no more. You could do four passes, stop for something, and do one more pass but they couldn't be fooled. That was it until they had some food and water. But having to steer a tractor all day was more than welcomed!
|
|