Energy efficiency of horses vs tractors

[j.l.holt]

near horse…you are right,,we do this life style because we like it.   A good farmer never gets done. He always finds something else he can do to make his farm better.  At least in his eyes.

[bendube]

I have another article, from Sweden that does try to make the direct comparison of horses vs tractors. The article uses “emergy” analysis, which is a little bit of a complicated methodology, but basically tries to put all energy in terms of the solar radiation contained in it. Things that are farther from solar radiation, such as fossil fuels (solar radiation transformed into plants, some of which didn’t fully decompose, etc) are charged a higher value. Understanding the exact details is not super important to the points I’m making though, though.

The big takeaways from this article:

1.) All told, tractors were slightly more “emergy” efficient than horses in generating tractive work (force on the drawbar times distance.

2.) But horses were based on 60% renewable sources, while tractors only used 9% renewable.

3.) Possibly most interesting: Though the horses were less efficient at generating tractive work, they required less emergy/ha for farming, because the soils farmed by the horses had lower bulk density (due both to manure application and less compaction,) so implements in the horse-powered farm required less draft to do the same work.

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