The Low-Tech Times

The Drudge Report featured some interesting links today, including one providing the title of this post.

After The Low-Tech Times covered a story speculating that farmers may switch from tractors to horses if gas prices continue to rise, Breitbart.com reports that some farmers in Tennessee are now turning to mules:

MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny Raymond trained them and also modified the tractor rake so the mules could pull it. T.R. Raymond says the mules are slower than a petroleum-powered tractor, but there are benefits.

“This fuel’s so high, you can’t afford it,” he said. “We can feed these mules cheaper than we can buy fuel. That’s the truth.”

Additionally, in a related human-powered story, Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press reports that police officers are now spending more time outside of their police cruisers due to high fuel prices:

NEWBERRY, S.C. (AP) - With gasoline climbing toward $4 a gallon, police officers around the country are losing the right to take their patrol cars home and are being forced to double up in cruisers and walk the beat more.

Will we see more even human-powered and animal-powered activities in the wake of record high oil prices? Will gas prices continue to rise sharply or will there be some relief?

After winning the Kentucky Derby, Big Brown was again victorious at the Preakness Stakes in front of over 112,000 horse racing fans. The large crowd demonstrates the continued popularity the old sport of horse racing has even in today’s hi-tech society.

Several years ago, I attended the Preakness at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. I went with friends to the infield, which was popular with young folks betting and partying. The downsides of the infield are that you cannot see very much at all of the races and that the porta-jons become quite disgusting by the end of the day. The next time I go, I will definitely look into getting a seat in the stands.

Preakness.com offers a story followed by a press conference covering this year’s race:

Big Brown, who captured the Kentucky Derby by 4¾ lengths at Churchill Downs two weeks ago, won in hand by 5-1/4 lengths Saturday over long shot Macho Again. Icabad Crane was a half-length farther back in third and Racecar Rhapsody finished fourth.

Big Brown completed the 1-3/16ths distance in 1:54.86 over the fast main track.

That works out to an average speed of over 37 mph. Will we have a Triple Crown winner this year? What do you think will happen at Belmont?

Kris De Decker of Low-tech Magazine (not affiliated with The Low-Tech Times) brings up some very interesting points in his most recent article Bring back the horses:

Replacing tractors with horses would be a good move since horse manure is a perfect fertilizer for agricultural soil…

Horses have more advantages over tractors. They reproduce themselves, while tractors don’t. That means more oil saved, and other resources like water and metals, because if you switch to horses you don’t have to manufacture tractors. And while tractors need fossil fuels to operate, horses don’t.

Obviously the mechanization of farming made sense due to increased efficiencies in large scale of farming; the article goes on to state that a transition back to horses might only make sense when oil becomes prohibitively expensive. At what price point does oil trigger a return to old-fashioned farming techniques?