[robj3]

Tony Stroppa wrote:

Nine as opposed to twenty-seven 20' ISO containers is a lot more reasonable, but still, how many people is the Project supposed to feed, and for how long?

dragoon500ly wrote:

There is no way that the Project would be able to support the entire surviving population of a post-oops world for much more than a minimal amount of time.

Richard's initial post suggested to me that this was an emergency relief capacity - enough to relieve a local disaster that was available to a given field team.

The 90 day food supply for 3,000 people being kicked around seems like a reasonable start, until area and regional Project assets are brought to bear on the situation.

That's 1,800 containers needed to feed a token population scattered across the USA, containers that can't hold anything like components for a fertiliser plant, materials to build or repair plows, agricultural machinery of any kind.

Fertiliser plants and tractor factories are area or regional level assets. Plow kits would be part of one of Richard's proposed containers.

Speaking of something else, saying "Mechanisation is a small (but highly visible) component of modern high-yield agriculture" is kind of like saying mechanism is a small (but highly visible) component of modern high-speed transportation.

The remark wasn't as silly as you apparently think.
Without oil extraction, refining and distribution, where's modern high-speed transport? What about roads, ports, airports? The factories that build cars, trains, planes and their supply chains? What about the common engineering and safety standards that underlie all of this?

Back to agriculture: there's a lot more to growing crops than combines and tractors.

Thinking more widely: this is another reason why recovery has stagnated at D+150 - a lack of infrastructure and physical capital (Tony's right about needing to rebuild industry).

Another obvious area for Project expertise is food storage (pest proof containers). Distribution comes 'naturally' with area and regional level logistic support networks.

While the obvious thought about Ag teams is they would be slaving out in the fields (and there would still be lots of that) but they are most useful as a cadre and knowledge base.

Agreed - all Project members are most useful as a knowledge base.

As a side note, I figure that 1 20' ISO container (1 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) will store 28,119kg of maize/seed corn (at 721kg/cu.m, 39 cubic metres per TEU). This amount of seed will plant 1313 hectares (21.4/kg seed/hectares) with a yield of 6.6 tons per hectare or 8672 tons total.

Looks reasonable.
From:
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/pub...ons/pm1885.pdf

figure 30,000 seeds per acre - this is ~75,000 per hectare.

A pessimistic fudge factor for seeds/bushel (25.4kg of corn) is 85,000 seeds per bushel:

http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/...estmethod.html

That's ~22.4kg corn per hectare.
1,250 ha planted per 28,000 kg corn.

Historical average yields from the Iowa State file linked above and
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/serv...-of-area-plant

range from 10 bushels/acre (635kg/ha) to 150 bu/acre (9525kg/ha).
6.6 tons/ha (~104 bu/acre) is a typical 1970s level yield.

This makes a good case for a container of seed corn as an emergency supply in areas where it can be grown. Wheat and rice look like good alternatives in certain regions. The question is whether or not this should be a field level asset or not. I can't see why not.


Rob