Oxen make the NY Times/Includes discussion of large scale animal-powered operations

[Nat(wasIxy)]

@goodcompanion 27383 wrote:

I agree that medieval manorial insularity has nothing to do with draft animals or the size of the operation. But I disagree that there was as heavy a degree of trade as you suggest. Some goods did travel, but nothing on the scale of what would take place a few centuries later. The roads, warehouses, canals, ports, and ships were simply not up to the task, for one thing. A comparison of the displacement tonnage of a cogge (medieval cargo ship) of the 1200s versus a cargo fluyt of the 1600s tells a story of rapidly increasing trade volumes.

You could also argue that the medieval manor is not really a single operation but an agglomeration of interconnected smaller ones. The limiting factor in the size of a manor is the ability of people on the perimeter to reach the center in a timely fashion. The people within it share a culture and allegiange that separates them from other manors and the outside world. The manor was also created by external pressure. It was not an option for most to leave and try one’s luck elsewhere. This is why the manor is a poor model for anyone trying to create a large-scale animal power farm in the present day. We don’t share a culture, we don’t all swear fealty to the same lord, and we are all free to leave when we are fed up.

What you describe for your 5000 head operation sounds to me a lot more like ranching than farming. You may or may not be able to carry it out, that’s not of interest to me. Ranching as you point out, as in the American range in the Old West, scales up quite easily, as long as there is more grass over the next rise. But if the land is good land, ranching is just not as productive as farming. This is why medieval europe was engaged in farming (with pasturing as a crucial part of that) rather than ranching. Go to the African Savannah, or Wyoming or Western Australia, maybe ranching is the thing to do. But if you are farming, then you are up against inexorable problems of physics that will absolutely, certainly limit your scale.

OK I think we have a communication problem, as over here we don’t have ranching, it’s all just farming. And I don’t know that I’m quite convinced that what I’m doing is your definition of ‘ranching’ as we have beef & dairy cattle, pigs, sheep, arable and forage production! It all just hinges around the mobstocking idea and works into that. You may or may not be interested in what I can acheive, but I was just pointing out that I used that example because it’s me and what I know, yet people seemed to be suggesting I was applying that elsewhere…I’m not.

As far as the medieval thing goes, again we’re not on the same page. Rievaulx was an abbey, not a manor. It was also not an isolated case, it’s simply the one I know most about as it’s local. That system worked pretty well for them, and it was copied everywhere – the system got so big that everyone got jealous, and it all came to an end in the dissolution of the monastries and all that land and wealth filled up the king’s pockets nicely! But we’re talking he 1500s by that time, with massive trade well under way – not only wool but also spices, tobacco, sugar, tea, etc – all done oil free. The circumstances around that particular farm are not appropriate to us today but the simple fact remains that single ‘bodies’ managed to farm thousands of acres rather successfully for a long period of time with only draught animals and people to rely on. It’s possible, just different and I don’t share the apparent negativity about what people are prepared to do. Yes some people are very lazy and stupid, but not all! And not ‘all’ of them would need to work the land IMO, as we DO have some oil-free technology that we haven’t had in the past.

[goodcompanion]

@Ixy 27400 wrote:

It’s possible, just different and I don’t share the apparent negativity about what people are prepared to do. Yes some people are very lazy and stupid, but not all! And not ‘all’ of them would need to work the land IMO, as we DO have some oil-free technology that we haven’t had in the past.

Nothing negative implied on my part about what people in general or yourself in particular are prepared to do. I am just saying that it is much more likely that they will do it on small decentralized holdings than on large centralized holdings. History proves decentralized small operations to be the better survivors of crisis. Physics favor smaller operations when using natural sources of power. I think individual people will do amazing things, probably yourself included. But most likely those amazing things will not extend over hundreds or thousands of acres, if history is any guide.

As for the Farming/Ranching disagreement, you can’t pin that entirely on me. You yourself used the American cattle drives as justification for your argument that animal powered operations can easily scale up. My point is that this is true perhaps of situations in which there is a broad range and no need to stockpile anything anywhere. But you say you have dairy and arable aspects to your operation. To these (“farming operations”), the laws of exponential decrease in efficiency with incremental increase in size apply, and your scale will be limited by the laws of physics. This is a GOOD THING. Why would anyone want unlimited scale? Cheap energy has freed our hands, as a race, to behave as if there were no limitations, and here we are as a result. Why not let your operation be sane in scale and leave some land for the next person to have their own small operation too?

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