Ox-ploughing in agroforests

[Guest guest]

Hello,

 

Syam and Pancaratna give the following data and

comments:

 

Maypur – Oxen ___0.36 acres/day @ Rs. 450.

Tractors___13 acres/day @ Rs. 180

 

UK – Oxen___1 acre/day @ ?. Tractors___?

 

Questions asked:

 

Regarding the costs of tractor ploughing in mayapur

land. Does that figure take into account purchase

price, maintenance, loss of value etc. Is the cost of

tractors subsidised in some way?

 

UK comparisons = conventional wheat grain sells at 85

pounds sterling per tonne, organic wheat grain sells

for about 200 pounds per tonne, ox-powered would have

to be valued at 300 pounds sterling per tonne.

 

In Mayapur they are breeding 60 cows per year, which

means over 20 years there will probably be about 600

male oxen of which about 400 will be workable.

 

How does mayapur plan to utilise all these oxen if the

land is being farmed by tractors?. How much difference

in the price of rice would there be if the food is

produced by tractors or produced by working oxen. Has

such an analysis been done?

 

 

So, various points here can be analysed.

 

The lack of data is really restrictive to analyse the

above data, both in terms of quantity of data and

quality.

 

Still, the questions are necessary to be answered to

have a more complete analysis.

 

 

My points:

 

Quantity of land ploughed per day is not necessarily

the important quality in the desicion process here.

This depends a lot on what type of land use will be in

operation and the ploughing needs at certain times and

in certain conditions.

 

An ideal cenario for oxen is within an agroforest

plantation, taking advantage of cropping between trees

for the first 5 years before the trees shade out the

crops too much. Diagram below:

 

trees O O O O O

O

 

crops

trees O O O O O

 

 

crops

trees O O O O O

O

 

crops

trees O O O O O

 

 

For 5 years oxen can plough between the trees and

crops can be intensively managed to produce high

yielding crops, it could be also grains.

Then, after 5-7 years, the end result is an orchard or

home garden (permacultural) with silvo-pastoral

undergrowth, meaning the cows can graze underneath the

trees.

 

Tractors would not be suited to such an arrangement,

except the type used in Japan on their paddy fields

which are very small and mobile.

 

So, the above situation places the quality of the

work, in terms of design, above the quantity of land

ploughed.

 

Land ploughed, cost of ploughing system - oxen or

tractors, and labour needs are just 3 variables that

fit into a more complex system of inputs and processes

that yeild varied outputs. If the system is very

simple like extensive grain production in the American

Mid-West or on the Argentine Pampas then tractors can

easily beat oxen. If the system is more diverse and

complex then the tractor can loose competitive

advantage.

 

If one takes high-value products like medicinal herbs

the cost of land ploughing is minimal to the product,

with lower-value products like grains ploughing is a

greater cost per product produced.

 

To make comparisons it is necessary to see the needs

of two competing systems - one simple and one complex.

 

To take the agroforest/home garden example, as that is

the cornocapia environment envisioned, then oxen have

serious advantages to tractors. What I would need, and

have looked at, is a map of the two systems with land

planning for the future of how to turn say a 1000

hectare grassland into a mixed agroforest with

cultivation between trees at various stages of

development. I think in this situation the direct

competitive advantage of tractors would be seriously

diminished to the point where substituting tractors

with oxen would not effect the cost structure greatly,

or it may even be a positive substitution. On top of

that, the needs to the system are to use oxen and

added advantages both seen and unseen need to be

measured. One could be the effect of tourism to the

farm for example, enhanced by an active forestation

and ox-power.

 

 

So to conclude, it is not just simple quantity

comparisons between oxen and tractor that matter, they

are in fact quite misleading at times. What is needed

is a compaison between two very different systyems,

which involves measuring (quantifying) highly comlex

qualities. So, more than a quantitive comparison a

qualitative comparison would need to be shown.

 

I still think it is possible to find an evening out of

the relationship between oxen and tractors if the

complexities of two very different systems are

studied.

 

Yours, Mark

 

__________

 

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