Chuck, have I got a deal for you. Since you claim to be a capitalist farmer, I'll sell you a fleet of the cheapest new harvesting capacity that you can add to your fleet.
Threshing machines. The payments on your new combines are costing you $100's per threshing hour. I can get you into a fleet of threshing machines for a fraction of that cost per threshing hour. And you can use wood burning steam engines to power them, and horses to haul the stooks and grain and save the environment from CO2 at the same time.
Except, you can't sell your current combines because you will still need them when it gets too dark for the threshing crews without lights, so your payments will stay the same, but their cost per acre will go up a lot. You will just add the payments for the threshing machines.
You'll never buy fuel for the threshing machines, you'll just have to hire a crew year round to cut and spilt and cure and haul firewood, you'll pay that crew year around, even when the threshing machines aren't even in use. You will need to seed a large amount of farmland back to trees to keep up with the demand.
Your current swathers won't work, so you'll have to buy a fleet of binders, and horses to pull them, and harnesses, and build a barn to house the horses, and hire the crews to drive them, then feed and look after the horses year around, even if they aren't producing anything all winter. You'll have to devote a large proportion of your farmland to growing horse feed, those are acres that will no longer be growing crops you can sell. But you'll still have the payments on your existing swathers to swath for the combines you'll have to keep.
Just like wind and solar, the supply needs to be brought to where the demand is, and since a threshing machine is stationary, you'll need to buy a fleet of stook wagons and horses and hire the crews to haul the stooks to the threshing machines.
The threshers won't reach into your current grain carts and trucks, so you'll need to buy an entire fleet of grain wagons and crews to run them, but you'll still have to keep your trucks and carts to service the combines. Did you forget that those wagons don't have hoists? Now the elevators you haul to will have to install hoists to dump the wagons, should that cost be forced on all the other farmers who don't use it?
You will have more downtime, they require a lot of maintenance. With a road speed of 2 miles per hour behind the steam engine while you move from field to field across your 6000 acre farm, you will need a lot of redundant capacity to make up for the travel time while the threshing machines don't do any productive work.
They are quite weather dependent. Everytime it rains, and every night, you'll have to remove all the belts from the thresher, and the canvases from the binders, better allow a lot of extra time for this.
The straw will all end up in a pile, if you burn it, you release CO2, since care about the environment, you will need to spend a lot of time and energy putting the straw back on the fields where it belongs.
But at least you can always claim that these new threshing machines have the cheapest cost of new threshing capacity. Unless of course you can actually do math.
Threshing machines. The payments on your new combines are costing you $100's per threshing hour. I can get you into a fleet of threshing machines for a fraction of that cost per threshing hour. And you can use wood burning steam engines to power them, and horses to haul the stooks and grain and save the environment from CO2 at the same time.
Except, you can't sell your current combines because you will still need them when it gets too dark for the threshing crews without lights, so your payments will stay the same, but their cost per acre will go up a lot. You will just add the payments for the threshing machines.
You'll never buy fuel for the threshing machines, you'll just have to hire a crew year round to cut and spilt and cure and haul firewood, you'll pay that crew year around, even when the threshing machines aren't even in use. You will need to seed a large amount of farmland back to trees to keep up with the demand.
Your current swathers won't work, so you'll have to buy a fleet of binders, and horses to pull them, and harnesses, and build a barn to house the horses, and hire the crews to drive them, then feed and look after the horses year around, even if they aren't producing anything all winter. You'll have to devote a large proportion of your farmland to growing horse feed, those are acres that will no longer be growing crops you can sell. But you'll still have the payments on your existing swathers to swath for the combines you'll have to keep.
Just like wind and solar, the supply needs to be brought to where the demand is, and since a threshing machine is stationary, you'll need to buy a fleet of stook wagons and horses and hire the crews to haul the stooks to the threshing machines.
The threshers won't reach into your current grain carts and trucks, so you'll need to buy an entire fleet of grain wagons and crews to run them, but you'll still have to keep your trucks and carts to service the combines. Did you forget that those wagons don't have hoists? Now the elevators you haul to will have to install hoists to dump the wagons, should that cost be forced on all the other farmers who don't use it?
You will have more downtime, they require a lot of maintenance. With a road speed of 2 miles per hour behind the steam engine while you move from field to field across your 6000 acre farm, you will need a lot of redundant capacity to make up for the travel time while the threshing machines don't do any productive work.
They are quite weather dependent. Everytime it rains, and every night, you'll have to remove all the belts from the thresher, and the canvases from the binders, better allow a lot of extra time for this.
The straw will all end up in a pile, if you burn it, you release CO2, since care about the environment, you will need to spend a lot of time and energy putting the straw back on the fields where it belongs.
But at least you can always claim that these new threshing machines have the cheapest cost of new threshing capacity. Unless of course you can actually do math.
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