Poland population and farming model

[atiff]

Hi,

Updated this again, if anyone is interested. Things changed include:

- Added a "max farming area" column for each location down to gmina level. I built this by hand/eyeball, using Google Maps satellite pics and assuming about 80% of the non-forested land is farmable. There will be things that are "off" in doing this, but it's a reasonable baseline, I think.

- Added an "imported food producers" column, showing a number of people assumed to be working within a city/town to help import and distribute food within a location (in addition to the producers who actually make it at the source).

- Roughly updated all the population figures in the yellow columns to show the "maximum population" needed to farm that location. In many rural places, this is larger than the pre-war population (manual labor replacing machines).

From this, I intend to down-grade these population numbers to reflect the specific setting I am working on. But I thought I would provide this as the "max population" file for others, if they are interested, so they can play with it on their own.

Any comments, let me know!

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by atiff

...the relative lack of children; both the old and the young were the ones least likely to survive the harsh years that have followed the nuclear exchanges. And while a parent can survive beyond the death of a child, the reverse situation has not generally been true.

The above is taken from atiff's rpol game.
Reading it I found it rather depressing if entirely true. A very sad state of affairs and something every last person is likely to have witnessed countless times since the outbreak of the war, particularly since the nukes dropped.

I think we all tend to forget that it's the children who suffer the most, the children who end up doing the majority of the dying in a total war.

[WallShadow]

The text of Ruins of Warsaw mentions scythes as farm implements--that's a fairly labor-intensive method of harvesting the grain.
Anybody have an idea how difficult it would be to cobble together a couple of McCormick Reapers to bring the Warsaw harvest in while allowing most of the hand labor to go to shoring up the fortifications? And about how many would be needed to bring their harvest in within 2-3 days? Nothing really fancy, don't need the machines to thresh or bind the stalks just to cut them down. If the city's jackleg mechanics have been scrounging the debris for useable metal, I am sure they would have come across a few bicycle frames by now. Or perhaps Adam Rataj has some part of a consignment of bikes on board the barge from the Krakow industries. The grumpy genius ship's mechanic could use the Krolowa's machine shop to transform the bikes into harvester frames. Research at the New/Old City library could provide essential details as to how to make the frames strong enough to function correctly. Disinformation can be spread that the frames are designed to help people take their belongings out of the city when the Baron("who will surely be the victor") assaults the city. Lots of adventure potential here.

I've been toying with the idea of trying to harvest just the tops of the cereal stalks, leaving the rest of the plant upright. When the Baron's forces come a-marchin' through the rye, so to speak, lob some WP rounds into the dry stalks, creating a ring of fire around the units. Troops, by the numbers, _PANIC_!!!!!! You could probably leave the corn on the stalks--it would cook the ears and provide a meal post battle. THen again, marching through a cornfield with lots of downed ears underfoot is like dancing on rolling pins (something we found out at the 135th Antietam ACW reenactment).

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by WallShadow

The text of Ruins of Warsaw mentions scythes as farm implements--that's a fairly labor-intensive method of harvesting the grain.
Anybody have an idea how difficult it would be to cobble together a couple of McCormick Reapers to bring the Warsaw harvest in while allowing most of the hand labor to go to shoring up the fortifications? And about how many would be needed to bring their harvest in within 2-3 days?

Johnny come lately here. A hay mower can do the job of the reaper. Fabricate a pan of sheet metal behind the sickle head and a person with a rake pulls it off for the bundlers. Power for the mower might be a problem unless you have old horse drawn mowers which are ground driven. The typical horse mower had a five foot cut. Moving at 2 mph, walking speed for the horse pulling the mower, you cut about 1.2 acres/hour. A ten hour day, which is not all work, so figure about 80% efficiency (which is still too high problably) leaves about 1 acre/hour. Ten hours = ten acres cut. It would take a crew of one driver, one raker, and probably 3-4 bundlers at least per machine. There would be more as shockers come along gathering bundles to place in shocks (small stacks) unless the bundles are hauled right away to the barn. The grain is cut a bit on the green side to cut down shattering (grain loss), and needs to cure in the shock for several days before threshing begins. Weather plays a big part in this. But assuming field shocks are made, 2-3 shockers might be needed per machine to get the grain off the ground. So your looking at a crew of 7-9 persons to cut 10 acres/day.

You can figure the math as to how many are needed for three days work as I don't know how many acres you're talking about. I would say a typical field though is probably no more than 20 acres if it's all done by muscle power, probably smaller in the range of 5-10 acres.

In days of old one man with a scyth could cut about an acre a day so I've read. He needed a bundler or two with him, and another to shock, so there were 3-4 persons cutting an acre a day...

Hope this helps some, and not too late.
Grae