How agriculture works thread

5030 · Nov 12, 2022

ovrszd said:
They contract their fuel in December. Last year I was in the office when they contracted red fuel. 250,000 gallons at $2.43 p/gallon. Curious to see what they have to pay this year.

It ain't gonna be that cheap this time around.

ovrszd · Nov 12, 2022

5030 said:
It ain't gonna be that cheap this time around.

Nope. They contract everything they can. So this year their input costs weren't very much higher than last. Not going to be so lucky this time....

ovrszd · Nov 13, 2022

Sorry if this has been posted previously. I found it very interesting. 40 years ago when I first started doing vacations in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado a LOT of vegetables were harvested by hand. Now that percentage is small. But some is necessary.

5030 · Nov 13, 2022

Depends entirely on the crop pocked actually. Cabbage is 100% had pocked, so are sauce tomatoes and green peppers.

ovrszd · Nov 13, 2022

I have regretted for years not taking pics of the farm laborers back then.

One example was harvesting Spinach. All hand cut and packed in peck baskets. Baskets loaded on flatbed trucks and hauled to town. There was a huge icehouse there with a mountain of crushed ice piled on a huge loading dock. Field trucks backed up to the South side of the dock. Over the road reefer van trailers backed up to the North side. Workers scurrying like ants on an ant hill. Grab a peck basket, carry it to the ice pile, open the lid. A scoop of ice added to the top, lid replaced. Carry to the van trailers and stacked inside. Van trailer gets full, shuts doors and takes off to it's destination somewhere in the U.S. Repeat. All day long. Fresh spinach.

ArlyA · Nov 14, 2022

The Welkers in Montana are servicing one of the BIG buds that has a radiator leak. He also speak of there 60ft cultivator or is it a chisel plow, they've been using.

ArlyA · Nov 16, 2022

This is quite the JD marketing film from the 1950's.

ovrszd · Nov 16, 2022

ArlyA said:
This is quite the JD marketing film from the 1950's.

I've saw this. Just imagine what the operators thought as they were running this equipment!!!! It would be like an operator today running a 500HP tractor pulling a 50ft implement.