Pedal agricultural machinery

Agriculture and soil. Pollution control, soil remediation, humus and new agricultural techniques.
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chatelot16
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by chatelot16 » 26/11/14, 20:57

whatever the wealth or the misery the comparison between the solutions of motive force remains the same! human power is the most expensive ... the draft animal comes next and the oil engine is the cheapest to use

the problem is therefore that when we do not have the means to operate an engine we have even less the means to maintain a draft animal ... so we eat them ...

good mechanics would be useful, but really good mechanics ... not the piggy too fragile too expensive too complicated that we manufacture today

the tractors that we see today in France are always more powerful always more expensive to be productive by working very quickly

for some countries it would be necessary to build something much slower, much simpler, which would be more profitable than draft animals, because a tractor consumes nothing in the garage, because it can work full time without tiring when there need it

when I say tractor, I also mean tiller

of course you don't need programmed obsolescence mechanics ... is it possible to make sustainable tractors? I think so when I see my plowing tractor with 15m clm diesel engine manufactured in 1958 (a year before me) and which still works without any major repairs ... which does not work often, but can work very hard during the day or there is a need

I see the modern agricultural equipment around my house much more fragile much more expensive to maintain

and my old clm plowman is not perfect: with the current technique we could do even better

therefore it is useful to invent good agricultural equipment! not only for the underdeveloped (but developing) countries but also for the underdeveloped countries which will soon no longer be able to afford the current bad equipment

I wanted to settle in Ivory Coast to make good equipment, but alas there were some problems ... and I said to myself that there was no need to move, which I wanted to do in ivory coast will soon be to do in france
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by Gaston » 27/11/14, 15:38

chatelot16 wrote:I see the modern agricultural equipment around my house much more fragile much more expensive to maintain
Standards and regulations also have a large share of responsibility in the complexity (and therefore the fragility) of current mechanics :|
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by Did67 » 27/11/14, 16:44

chatelot16 wrote:whatever the wealth or the misery the comparison between the solutions of motive force remains the same! human power is the most expensive ... the draft animal comes next and the oil engine is the cheapest to use


The proof: there is an abundance of tractors and combines in Africa and it is in rich countries that children are made to work ????

Come on, I'll leave you. It pains me too much [and somewhere, badly].
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by Did67 » 27/11/14, 16:52

Ahmed wrote:
Some plants accept growing in difficult conditions (jatropha and surely many others ...) and could provide soil cover.

The brf also works, but must be conceived more in terms of organic contribution when there is presence of termites: the branches are buried and are reduced without the need for a shredder!



Yes. There are also legume trees (Prosopis, etc ...).

But then again, I was already off the beaten track (or bordering on it) but encountered more problems than I found solutions:

- the biomass is proportional to the water dropped; so it's still limited
- it is especially reserved for "more useful" (including fire)
- young plants have little chance, in an atmosphere of absence of fences, to escape the teeth of goats, donkeys and other herbivores ...
- etc


I swear to you: with me, it's easy; so easy that I don't understand that not everyone has a garden; over there (I'm talking specifically about Sahelian-type climates), it is so difficult that I understand that we do not get started [even if I had some success by first dealing with the question of water = bunds or "zaïs" = small crescent-shaped basins moon]
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by Ahmed » 27/11/14, 17:07

Did, don't take the words of Chatelot, it only means that, from a purely technical point of view, human effort is limited compared to the metabolism of a larger animal and that petroleum provides very inexpensive energy (this last consideration is valid only for a limited period and with simple machines); it is true, and this is where the shoe pinches, that the political problems, which he evaded, make that the most productive solutions (not necessarily the most effective) in terms of energy implemented, are the more heteronomous (in short, they make more use of power relations) and are therefore out of reach of the dominated.
This is why, rather than increasing the dependence of the peasants, it is necessary to privilege the solutions preserving to the maximum their autonomy and that the technique must never be dissociated from the socio-political context ...

I am editing to respond to your message that occurred during the writing of mine.
Of course, I know that nothing is easy there and that the simple fact of not having wire to protect the fields of the cattle is a serious handicap.
Zaï is a good technique, in the region of Madagascar in which I am particularly interested (NO), the climate is close to the Sahelian type and a recent experience of bunds has worked perfectly: this year, the wells of the ground where the experimentation has been set up are not dried up like those around, and this will allow to wait for the rainy season.
This will no doubt encourage the spread of these techniques.
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by Flytox » 27/11/14, 18:44

For those to whom "Zais" does not speak:

http://www.desjeunespourlaterre.fr/DES_ ... ntenu.html

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by Did67 » 27/11/14, 18:50

1) OK. For Chatelot.

But I would point out all the same that the question asked at the start is that of a solution in Burkina ... We can reason strictly "technical". Yaka then set up a nuclear power plant, since there is uranium in neighboring Niger ...

Sorry. I have heard this simplistic reasoning too many thousands of times that I find it hard to control myself ...

I'm bubbling. I am wrong to hurt myself.

2) It's very good to start with the bunds. Water being the start of everything (including life), this is where "progress" begins ... Almost thirty years ago, I also had this "intuition" ...

A study that appeared in a book that fell into my hands by chance established that a few years after my departure, in fact, the peasants continued to build the model of bunds that we had developed together ... was cited as "one of the rare cases" of introduction of a technique which "had taken" ...

Then, with more biomass, we can manage animal traction (donkey for example, in light-sandy soils) because we can feed animals with crop residues ... I was in an area of ​​heavy soil, a sort of hard glaze ... you needed beef ...

We can consider intercropping of legumes (cowpeas, peanuts ...) because competition for water decreases. This improves human nutrition (the seeds of legumes, rich in protein; people with less deficiencies can ... work more - but it's not slavery, it's just survival) and animal (the haulms) ...

Hence manure (very precisely, dried excrement), which enriches certain areas where animals are kept. This wealth is often "not valued" due to the lack of water, or even lost (wind erosion) ...

My bund model was associated with the distribution of manure just behind where the water collects. And there, the combination of the two (water + fertility) could give spectacular results ...

3) Slowly, and on a large scale, the Sahel is greening again! The general process of desertification tends to be reversed. Even if locally, situations are very contracted due to population densities ...
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by Ahmed » 27/11/14, 20:01

It was cited as "one of the rare cases" of introduction of a technique which "had taken" ...

I think people are demanding and quite receptive as soon as results result ... We should not expect a taste for experimentation, as promising as it is, from a population that plays its survival there where simple curiosity drives us ...

The cultivation under the trees is also a good track (agroforestry) since it increases the variety of productions, while providing shade: here the sun is not the limiting factor (at least, not in the sense that we l 'hear)!

There are real gaps in the transmission of agricultural knowledge and therefore a proportional desire to learn!
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by chatelot16 » 27/11/14, 20:12

we are at the heart of the problem! to save money you have to pay the price ... it's those who have the means who can use the most economical means ... it's the poorest who use the most expensive means

it also hurts me to see the poorest not having access to what they need, but I'm in France, and this problem also exists in France ... so I start by trying to do something in France

if the rich want to help the poor it does not seem to me that the good solution is to make the poor pedal on con machines ... I think rather that the good way would be to make good little rustic and economical agricultural machine, with multi-fuel combustion engine

alas if the africans look at the french material it one chooses it between the modern material too big too complicated too expensive too fragile, and the old material too worn too underperforming ... fortunately there is the Chinese material better adapted to the need, because that the Chinese also produce for their own peasant who is not too rich and are therefore able to sell to the rest of the world

anaerobic digestion works well! did is well placed to tell us about it! compressing methane is of no interest in France given the other source of energy that we have ... but in Africa it is something else: methanization makes it possible to recover waste that cannot be used for anything else

the weight of a methane tank is bad for a road vehicle in France, but without drawback for an agricultural machine

I have nothing against donkeys or other draft animals: all means are good

I am not the type to impose my ideas as being the only valid ... I am rather the type to regret not being able to realize my best idea as quickly as I would like to make them usable by those who need it
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by JLB29P » 24/09/15, 10:44

at Did67
reading the subject from the beginning, I see that the subject is not the one to which I was responding.
For info anyway, 3 anecdotes:
- as a child, my parents owned 4 cows, two of which pulled the plow and served as draft animals. The wealthiest laborers had a horse and between them a pair of oxen.
I had imagined that the use of cows was linked to the period (after the war in Creuse around 1950).
I was surprised, crossing the same region in 1975, to see a farmer using a cow to pull his plow!

Before 1980, I also saw a farmer in the Mazamet region using a 2CV (the car!) To pull the plow!
This 2CV had 2 engines, one at the front, the other at the rear.
I had thought of a perilous tinkering, before learning that the gas operators operating in the desert had had 400 (?) 2CV twin engine manufactured by Citroën or a subcontractor?
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