"We’ll start in the [[Genesee Valley]], western [[New York]], in 1801. The new republic is in the 26th year of its existence and yet [[American]] **farmers grow bread wheat** not just the same way their ancestors did before they emigrated from [[England]] to British North America a few generations ago, but **in a manner not too different from practices in ancient [[Egypt]] more than two millennia ago**. "The sequence begins with two oxen harnessed to a wooden plow whose cutting edge is shod with an iron plate. Seed, saved from the previous year’s crop, is sown by hand, and brush harrows are used to cover it up. Putting the crop in takes about 27 hours of human labor for every seeded hectare. And the most laborious tasks are still to come. The crop is harvested by cutting with sickles; cut stalks are bundled and tied manually in sheaves, and they are stacked upright (to make shocks or stooks) and left to dry. The sheaves are then hauled to a barn and threshed by flailing them on a hard floor, straw is stacked, and grain is winnowed (separated from the chaff), measured, and put into sacks. Securing the crop takes at least 120 hours of human labor per hectare. The complete production sequence demands about 150 hours of human labor per hectare, as well as about 70 ox-hours. The yield is just one ton of grain per hectare, and of that at least 10 percent has to be set aside as seed for the next year’s crop. **Altogether, it takes about 10 minutes of human labor to produce a kilogram of wheat, and that would, with wholegrain flour, yield 1.6 kilograms (two loaves) of bread**. "**This is laborious, slow, and low-yielding farming—but it is completely solar, and no other energy inputs are required beyond the Sun’s radiation**: the crops produce food for people and feed for animals; trees yield wood for cooking and heating; and wood is also used to make metallurgical charcoal for smelting iron ores and producing small metal objects including plow plates, sickles, scythes, knives, and strakes to cover wooden wagon wheels. **In modern parlance, we would say that this farming requires no non-renewable (fossil fuel) energy inputs and only a minimum of non-renewable material subsidies (iron components, stones for gristmills), and that the production of both crops and materials relies solely on renewable energies deployed through the exertion of human and animal muscles**." ([Location 1048](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08SGC3TD3&location=1048)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[technology]], [[systems-thinking]], [[food-production]], [[farming]], [[solar-energy]], [[photosynthesis]], [[agrarian-economies]], **Source** -- [[202412030828 - B - How the World Really Works]]