farming high oil price

[danie]

can somebody help with the development of electric tractors and low energy planters for corn

[Pangloss]

What is it you want to know?

[honestdude14]

I hope were talking small scale farming here.

[danie]

At first we can look at small scale farming. Conventional planting use about 30 l diesel per ha. No till can reduse it by 50% but there is still a lot of extra weight to drag along ( Planter + tractor + seeds). Theoreticelly the same amount of work could be done by 2kWh if you use electricity instead of diesel .

If you plant 1 Ha oilseed crop and convert the oil to diesel you could plant 10 ha of land.

Electric equipment could be more ideal if you for instance use solal energy and wind in combination.

[CaptainPanic]

When you try to optimize something, step #1 is to identify the bottleneck. So, what costs the most energy when you're planting corn?

 

I have searched around on google a bit, and I found some info.

 

Research studies have shown that a planter which is out of adjustment and operated at too high a speed can cut corn yields by up to 20 bushels per acre. Some of the important factors related to yield loss include planting less than desired number of seeds per acre, variable in-row seed placement, improper planting depth, and poor seed to soil contact.

 

So, I guess this planting corn isn't a matter of just pushing some seeds into the soil.

 

Perhaps anyone can enlighten me... what is the bottleneck here? What costs the most energy? (And as I read from the link above, a planter is just expensive, it doesn't use much energy, because it's only used once per year... so why are we optimizing it in the first place?)

[Think it thru]

You may wish to read about this electric tractor, a gas tractor conversion.

 

http://www.flyingbeet.com/electricg/

 

Along the lawn tractor size-- http://www.elec-trak.org/

 

Off topic about an electric tractor, but one can eliminate the energy need to produce the no-till chemicals by growing organically as per respected Rodale Institute and their New Farm Web site. http://rodaleinstitute.org/new_farm

 

Instead of spraying to prevent weeds a cover crop is flattened to form a mulch mat which is then planted into. The green manure crop that is used as the mulch is killed with a chevron shaped easy pulling roller rather than with chemicals.

 

http://www.newfarm.org/depts/notill/features/2006/0506/drawings.shtml

 

For large scale agriculture here in the United States no-till tractors would be between 100 and 200 horsepower and be pulling 16 row no-till planters. Those planters use a lot of down force to cut through old reside so are heavy which makes them pull hard, hence the horsepower need.

 

I don't know a single farmer that wouldn't welcome a tractor capable of replacing an 8 gallon, $40 per hour fuel burning tractor with one of practicality and reliability.

 

The problem with an electric tractor comes with the hours operated. Many are the days I have operated a tractor 12-14 hours and some operators farm longer hours. How will you store 12-14 hours of 100 horsepower energy?