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1. Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:49 UTC Jeff McFadden

   Most of the food in the world is produced using animal power and human power.
   The reason we could not defeat North Vietnam or Afghanistan is because their food and fiber production system was immune to centralized disruption.
   We dropped more tons of bombs on North Vietnam than all the combatants in WWII dropped on each other.
   They went on about their business. Nobody missed a meal.
   Water buffalo.
   In Afghanistan it's donkeys.
   Either way. Bulletproof.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:43 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     You can't do it off the seat of a tractor. The faster you go the more you miss. The faster you go the more land it takes to support you.
     Human attention is the most underrated, underused, resource we have.
     We got like 8 billion humans, and we can't think of anything to do with our share that doesn't require gasoline, diesel fuel, and electricity, which is the number one consumer of coal worldwide.
     Tomorrow it will be coal free.
     Tomorrow, since I was twelve. Before. Ike.
     I'm 76 week after next.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:44 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     Vegetables, salad greens, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, spinach and chard and carrots, potatoes - the more different things growing, the better the odds that *something* yields.
     Elderberries. Hazelnuts. Hickory nuts. Acorns, but they're a lot of work coz of the tannin.
     Beats starving hands down.
     I haven't even started.
     None of this takes tractors or diesel fuel.
     Under it we can graze a few cows, few sheep, a few goats, a few turkeys, work stock,. chickens - but it takes attention.

     Wonderskeptic repeated this.
   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:45 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     We could take one 2023 Missouri cornfield, just one field, and comfortably house, feed, and provide transportation energy for, somewhere in the 10 to 16 family range.
     And besides those families, there would be biologically active fence rows, wood lots, endless variety of plants, habitat for bugs and bees and small animals, amphibians, lizards, mammals - what we're killing off the way we're doing it.
     We don't have to do this to feed all the people, or to house all the people. Better than now.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:45 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     Within that cornfield we would be producing carbohydrates, perhaps nuts, some grain, seeds, plus fruit, grapes, perhaps apples, pears, persimmons, pawpaws, mulberries, strawberries, watermelon, cantaloupe - this is just flowers and vines, lots of it, or canopy trees and understory trees. Some annual grasses, maybe some sunflowers. More than a family could eat in a year.
     Mowing is the hardest part, and I don't think we've figured out better than the scythe, but I'm too old. Gasoline.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:46 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     Here's a video of the same mile of road on the same day, by donkey cart and by car at 25 mph. https://youtu.be/mBBrS4mUqeY

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:47 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     We're so efficient we've got giant autonomous John Deere tractors that are remotely operated like drones.
     We have completely removed humans from the fieldwork.
     In 20 years we're going to reduce our emissions with all the wonderful new stuff that we demand they build.
     But meanwhile, more natural methane so we can make more anhydrous ammonia and inject in into the land at 64' of width per pass.
     The tractors have tracks like bulldozers, some of them.
     That's not about feeding anybody. Money.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:47 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     We can produce more nutrition per acre (hectare) with ecosystem - mimicking horticulture oriented multi level food production systems than we can with a monocrop system, but it requires humans. It requires, more than anything else, human attention.
     Human attention is one of the most valuable resources at the ecosystem level, worldwide.
     It's what we want from each other.
     I have a standard line I use: the faster you go the more you miss.
     This is an absolute fact, can easily be tested.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 18:43:48 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     It is commonly believed that without high energy machines billions would starve.
     This is ridiculous. Six billion of them are growing their own gasoline and harvesting it with a scythe.
     Our system is a giant circular machine that produces untold millions of calories of corn and soybeans, runs half of it through cows and hogs, half of what's left through cars and trucks as biofuels, where there are more fossil calories in it than come back out.
     We call this "efficiency."

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 20:45:20 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     https://youtu.be/eZhwK2yFA5E

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 20:45:20 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     Correction: I didn't link in the right video. That's two different roads, one by donkey and one by car, but it tells the same story.
     You can see individual grass seed stalks from the donkey wagon. Green blur from a car.
     Of course, when we're in the car we can hook our attention to individual objects, so the video is particularly numb, but - we still can't give any one thing much time.

   • Jeff McFadden (jeffanddonkeys@spore.social)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 20:45:21 UTC Jeff McFadden

     in reply to

     Back in the easier, cooler days before 2020 the IPCC said that there were 2 billion people obese or overweight, 875,000 undernourished or starving, and that 20% of the food produced worldwide was wasted.
     Our high energy system is making us sick. 5/6 of the people with animal traction are reasonably well nourished.
     Most of the starving ones are in some war zone.
     Tractors aren't necessary. We can do better.