Thread: FARMING in T2K
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Old 12-08-2008, 12:16 PM
Graebarde Graebarde is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Texas Coastal Bend
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Default Farming after TEOTWAWKI

I will address this from the American perspective. Farming is hard work, even in the mechanized era. The slide to muscle-powered subsistence agriculture will be very difficult at best. There are several problems to be addressed going into this scenario for the unprepared individual which includes the vast majority.

Using your own muscle, vs. that of a four-legged creature, for the grunt work. Most persons, even hard working farmers, are not prepared for this. It will take time to prepare the land for some crop planting. Since the fall takes place in the non-planting season (late November) for most of the US, this can be an advantage in some areas. Hand digging with a spade and hoe is gruesome work. I dug a garden by hand from a sod yard using the deep bed method. It took me about four hours to dig the first 4x25 bed. This entailed digging down about three feet. Now this is probably excessive, but that’s what the plan called for. A regular plan would be to dig at least 12” though and does not bury the sod. And that is just the FIRST installment. You need to dig it and rake it to get rid of clods. Of course the more hands you have the faster it will go, to a point.

Advancing to the use of quadrupeds for power work entails having TRAINED animals. Here we’re talking horses, mules and oxen generally. It takes at LEAST four years to get an animal to the age where it can be worked without destroying the animal in the process. It’s like a kid shouldn’t be doing power lifting until their body structure has matured to a certain point. Of course during this time you train the animal. Oxen are relatively easy to train and maintain compared to horses and mules. But as I said, it will take time. There are few experienced persons (and animals) in comparison to projected need, for this at day one.

Tools for the trade vary from the foresaid spade and hoe, along with a rake, to do primary digging. Seeds will be hand planted, weeded, and harvested. A LOT of stoop labor for untrained muscles. Fat America will be a thing of the past for survivors. And I do mean survivors, for it will be a survival of the fittest after the fall. For draft animals, the trailing tools such as plows, cultivators, planters, etc are museum pieces, and far and few between in most sections of the country. Modern farm equipment can be modified to a point, but is usually so large it would take a herd of drafters to pull it, which we have deemed will not be the case. So during the four-years (yes I realize it will not take that long in general, but that’s the time to raise a work animal to maturity) farm implements will be modified and made. A good job for the mechanic.

Seed, fertilizer, pesticides of modern agriculture will be a thing of the past. While there is some problems with small grains with regard to hybrids it is nothing in comparison to the corn-bean cropping of the Midwest. Hybrids seeds will be good for year one, and the seed can not be relied on for future cropping in any certainty. There will not be 100 bushel corn and 60 bushel soybeans, generally speaking. It will take time and coordinated effort to get the necessary open-pollinated seed for future crops. Will our government allow the farmers to keep back seed for the next year when people need food now? It will be a tough decision. Chemical fertilizer and pesticides went the way of the oil refineries. Most of the plants are/were located in the same general vicinity of the refineries and used refinery stocks for production. It will take several years to build the soils back up using manure and crop rotation.


I have done a lot of work with yields of crops. Using my 1948 text as a base, since the yields we can expect from field crops will drop drastically. Wheat yields will be about 12-20 bushels per acre, compared to 30-50 now, while corn will fall back to the 30-40 bu/a compared to the 100+ now. Vegetables will be in the same deciline of yields as field crops until open-pollinated seed is used and people learn (the hard way) to raise a garden that will yield organically. Yes, American agriculture will be ORGANIC again, as it was for the centuries before the big boys got involved.

Now I have been dodging the actual question of sorts. How much land does it take to feed one person? The variables include the location, growing season, rainfall, seed used, experience, and LUCK to name a few. Yes LUCK is a good part of it. I have seen a wheat field ready for harvest the next day look like a flock of sheep were run through it during the night from hail. It is heart breaking from and economical perspective, devastating from a survival perspective if that was the food to get you through to the next crop. Diversity of crops helps some, giving a variety in diet among other things.

But to answer the question properly requires some assumptions to be made. Assume ‘average’ conditions, using hand tools, with some experience (at least the second crop). A precise calculation using caloric requirements and caloric yields of food stock, which I have, but not with me, will give you how much a person needs per year. However a rule-of-thumb gives about 6 pounds per day per person, which is 2190 pounds. Now not every thing that is harvested is eaten, such as with pumpkins in which the rind is discarded, so there is a processing loss in all crops. IF you assume a modest 10% or so, that takes the needed production to ~2400 pounds/person/year of all food stock.

Let’s say you grow corn, winter squash, dry beans, cabbage, potatoes, mixed vegetable and wheat. You do not double crop other than dry beans follow winter wheat and interplant squash with the corn. You will have a variety of vegetables in one plot such as onions, carrots, tomato, turnips, lettuce, etc. You have 1 acre tilled of fair land split into five plots. You were lucky and the bugs, birds, deer and other critters only got 20% of your crop. You kept the weeds under control, had sufficient water and pleasant growing season, with no disease problems. Your 0.2 acres of corn and squash gave you 400 pounds of corn and 250 pounds of squash (that makes the table). The dry beans and winter wheat give you 120 pounds of beans and 240 pounds of wheat. Heck you fought off the cabbage worms and actually got a decent crop, though not a pretty as what you saw before TDM, it was still about 3000 pounds of cabbage. Hope you like sauerkraut. Your spuds did well enough to give you 2000 pounds. Now whether you peel them or not depends on if this is all edible, but the nutrition is in the skins. The mixed vegetables will give you about 800 pounds of finished product or more. So the one acre has given you about 6800 pounds of mixed ‘finished’ goods. It would be enough for 2.8 persons (a couple and child?). I deducted for seed production already, For wheat and beans you need about 90#/acre, corn only needs about 8-10#, potatoes need almost 100# while the vegetables, including cabbage would take a couple of pounds at most (though that is variable too, and collecting seed from vegetables can get tricky. Ever had a hot bell pepper?)

Notice no livestock has entered into this equation. A hutch of rabbits will give you ~24 rabbits per year, which you can feed on the screenings, grass clippings, vegetable cuttings, weeds, etc. Same with chickens, where a broody hen will give you 8-12 fryers a couple times a year (or you can run an incubator/brooder). Meat is not the main thing, but the variety helps and chickens especially IMO are a bonus for bug/weed control and manure.

Grae
(I'll get some more direct answers next post)
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