Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The widespread nostalgic appeal of the draught horse often proves to be the
biggest hindrance to the popular acceptance of its serious worth as a farm, forest and
transport tool. Whenever you approach an individual or a government to suggest that
the working horse can make a worthwhile contribution to a sustainable future for us
all, you are almost invariably greeted with scorn or disbelief.
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The reluctance to examine animal power may also reflect a worry, on the part of scient-
ists, that their efforts to turn biomass into energy through diverse highfaluting systems will
prove no more efficient than the digestive systems of biological animals. The resistance of
scientists is reinforced by the opposition of economists who view livestock as labour in-
tensive: it takes a skilled man to handle a team of horses cultivating an acre or two a day,
whereas the average farmworker these days drives a 140 horse power tractor capable of
covering 20 times the area.
The social ecologist, however, will view the matter differently. Time may be money, but
speed, though lucrative, is disproportionately expensive on energy; and as regards energy,
it is land which is in short supply, not humans. More people on the land means less people
on the streets; and people on land produce energy, whereas people on streets consume it.
Blessed Are the Meek
Whereas the second generation of biofuel is hopefully more efficient than its prede-
cessor, the first generation of draught animals was more efficient than its successor. Horses
are the most extravagant of draught animals. In the past they found favour as pullers of the
plough only in a relatively small number of mainly wealthy countries, because they require
high quality food (though mules were widespread in many dryer climates). Oxen were and
are far more widely used throughout the world, largely because (like
Miscanthus
) they are
cheaper to run. In the words of one writer, they were 'content with much more modest fare,
more robust than horses, less likely to get injured, and when times got bad they could sur-
vive on simply dreadful food - dodgy straw and mouldy hay of a type that no horse would
touch. At the end of their working life oxen also made good beef - after a few months in a
end up in sausages as well.
Its not clear why a number of European countries moved from the ox to the horse - par-
ticularly since the horse might get requisitioned for war - hardly an advantage for the farm-
er, though it was for the breeder. It may have been because the horse was more prestigious
than the ox, partly because it performed better on the road (it was faster on a good road,
and on a road unfit for carts you could ride it) and partly because it is a more stimulating
and exciting animal. Nobody, it seems, has ever raced oxen - but then there is no equine
equivalent of bull fights either. According to one writer:
