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For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

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Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#251

Post by NicoJuicy »

macinjosh wrote: post #98

My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go…

Tractor as a service will only bite them back.

Look at how popular 40-year old tractors are :)

It's never been a better time to create a good old repairable machine.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#252

Post by golem14 »

markvdb wrote: post #70

The Karhkiv tractor plant models from the USSR are one step easier still to maintain, and hence very popular outside the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant The XTZ 150K: http://xtz.ua/en/kolisni-tractory/xtz-150k-09-172.html

Tons of equipment on Alibaba

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/large-wheel-tractor-w...

Not the faintest idea if any of it is decent. However, China probably uses their own tractors. They have a huge farms also, so maybe these are serviceable...

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#253

Post by Armisael16 »

jv22222 wrote: post #226
Armisael16 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems rather implausible given that railroads came about at the same time.

Well, there would be a lot more bicycles and they could go a lot more places a lot faster, no? I.E. They would enable a much faster rate of genetic mutation.

No. Bicycles were heavy, uncomfortable products for the first ~40 years of their existence. Rubber tires and pedals didn’t come to bicycles until the 1860s. By that point the US had >30k miles of extensively linking most of the northern states. The modern bicycle didn’t really come into being until the 1890s.

I’m having a hard time getting numbers for track in Europe, but the UK was the real pioneer and Germany followed quickly.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#254

Post by johnchristopher »

macinjosh wrote: post #98

My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go…

Do you think end-users products from corporation style farms are cheaper than family farm (for equivalent quality) ?

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#255

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

wolco wrote: post #196
ahoy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing your job to automation is bad for your livelihood. It has been since we started automating things.

Is it bad for your children's livelihood? You are sending a message on a computer made by a machine. Parts are so small it would be impossible to do by hand which created a number of other jobs to support this new ability.

If you work in the fields, and I invent tech that makes you twice as efficient, the most likely result is that half of people like you lose their jobs, and wages stay the same, if not decline due to oversupply.

Might be great for me, but it sucks balls for you. And it tends to suck balls for more people than it helps.

Edit: and that basically follows through to your kids...

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#256

Post by emiliobumachar »

giggles_giggles wrote: post #229
ahoy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an enormous body of law in the US that incentivizes a top-down corporate business structure and disincentives a co-op business structure.

This is quite a claim, but it's too vague for me to research independently. Where would I even start in exploring the "enormous body of law" that "incentivizes a top-down corporate business structure?" I am not asking rhetorically -- this is news to me and I'd like to know the details. Of course, co-ops aren't common in the US, but they do exist (like REI) so I'm just curious about the details of this criticism of th…

Arguably that's exactly the problem. There's so much law applying to farming that you'd need a sizable legal department to know it all. That favors centralization.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#257

Post by Polylactic_acid »

melling wrote: post #6

“ They cost a fraction of the price, and then the operating costs are much less because they’re so much easier to fix,” he said.” It’s not really so much a technology problem as the ability to repair, probably by the farmers themselves. Companies don’t make it easy. You need special equipment, tools, etc. We could insist on a right to repair, open standards, etc

It is a technology issue. Computers make things complex and opaque where they were once simple. When something stops turning you can look at it. Does it need grease? Is something blocking it from turning? When a microcontroller stops sending out the correct signals how could a farmer possibly do anything about that or even know what is going wrong?

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#258

Post by jv22222 »

Armisael16 wrote: post #253
jv22222 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there would be a lot more bicycles and they could go a lot more places a lot faster, no? I.E. They would enable a much faster rate of genetic mutation.

No. Bicycles were heavy, uncomfortable products for the first ~40 years of their existence. Rubber tires and pedals didn’t come to bicycles until the 1860s. By that point the US had >30k miles of extensively linking most of the northern states. The modern bicycle didn’t really come into being until the 1890s. I’m having a hard time getting numbers for track in Europe, but the UK was the real pioneer and Germany follo…

Well, clearly, wherever I heard that from was a terrible source of information! I stand corrected!

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#259

Post by windexh8er »

jessant wrote: post #181
andrepd wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land consolidation can be done through communes/co-ops, in which case the benefits of increased productivity are fairly distributed, or through private corporations, in which case profits are privatised and concentrated on a small owner elite class.

Nothing stopping people from doing that.

There are many corporate things that "stop people from doing that".

Seed monopolies [0]. Costco is undercutting chicken production just to maintain a $4.99 offering to their customers [1]. Mega farms have put over 2700 family farms out of business in Wisconsin [2]. CAFOs create pollution equivalent to 168 million people in the state of Iowa with only a total population of 3.2 million people [3]. All of this manure gets dumped back into the soil for monoculture corn farming which is grown to feed livestock which is also significantly inefficient and drains local resources on clean and fresh water supplies and significantly pollutes downstream via runoff into large rivers [4]. The main polluters are, again, these large scale farms concentrating operations for efficiencies to fulfill the ever expanding lineup of highly processed foods the majority of western culture now eats on a daily basis.

Money stops local farming. These mega farms are not in the business to make a great product, they're in the business to make a great profit - at the expense of their customers, no different than the tobacco manufacturers agenda. Between lobbyism, patents, mergers and grants by states desperate for revenue the concentration of control in farming has become very bleak in a short decade.

[0] https://philhoward.net/2018/12/31/global-seed-industry-chang... [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/business/costco-5-dollar-chic... [2] https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/industrial-dairy-farmin... [3] https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20... [4] https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/center...

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#260

Post by ahoy »

cpach wrote: post #236
apt-get wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why 75% of France's farmers belong to an agricultural cooperative?

Are those profitable though? Farming is heavily subsidized by the EU.

US agriculture is also heavily subsidized
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