Ranga, I thought of that, however I figured that the throughput energy reduces the higher up you point the leg. But hey, it worked so you’re right.

Ed Case says:
May 14, 2022 at 12:06 pm

Reading about the African Slave Trade to the United States.
The beancounters in Boston had worked out that the optimal vertical distance between decks for transporting slaves was 3 feet 3 inches and they required a floor space of 13 inches square.
The last ship landed at Charleston in 1858, it left Africa with 600, arrived in South Carolina with 465.

Yeah, totally shit.

Now read up on the slave trade that headed east, to the Arab countries and get back to us.

Then read up on who actually put an end to slavery.

Then read up on where slavery still exists in the world.

Expecting a report back inside 48hrs.

A report with pix/vid on the protests around Oz today .. and as usual, Vic plod doing what they do best ..!

https://xyz.net.au/2022/05/sack-them-all-protest-draws-huge-crowds-across-australia/

Dot

Talk horses. Metric is stupid.

Also, how stupid is liters per 100 k? It’s miles per gallon. Always was and always will be.

Margaret Atwood … in the Atlantic of course.

Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?

She could always emigrate to Canada…

Oh wait, she is Canadian.

Marvin agrees. “Brain the size of planet and they ask me to take you up to the bridge – call that jerb satisfaction, I asks ya?”

It was good to see the original Marvin get a cameo appearance in the movie.

Imperial/ American weights and measures are far superior to metric in every possible way.

Woodworkers, metalworkers and engineers who make things to spec might disagree.

Farmer Gezsays:

May 14, 2022 at 6:55 pm

40 hectares JC but that’s not the point.
Farmers have changed and yields are all in tonnes per hectare.
We apply kilos of fert and litres or mils of chemicals. We read labels for actives in grams per litre.
We weigh and sell in tonnes and kilometres to deliver.

And have a pint when it’s all done.

Metric also ties in with the 10101 systems of computing.

How so as you’re not placing 100 acres of land on computer software. 🙂

Dot says:
May 14, 2022 at 6:54 pm

Imperial is human centric. It makes sense to use inches and feet, but not at scale.

I think Americans use metric in the medical field etc. That’s okay. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

JC,
I’m guessing Gez is the same as me, in that we regularly convert and can visualise area in both imperial and metric. Most likely because of our age, we grew up through the conversion period and have had to talk the old and new lingo to different demographics.

Metric makes way more sense.

One hectare (10,000m2) or 100m x 100m, easy to see on the ground. =2.47ac

Not any more.
The carry over of acres is only because of surveying. You know it but you no longer operate or think in imperial terms.

Okay.

A quarter acre block of land was the rough perimeter of the old Australian home. I grew up imagining in my head what ~10,000 square feet feels like. I’d be fucked if I know what the metric equivalent looks like.

We moved from 1,800 square feet apartment to 2500 square feet one. I know the feel.
I guess it’s what you get used to.

Rockdoc

I’m invested in wild cat acreage in the Permian basin. The broker sends reports where they are in terms of drilling.

Tell me something (please). On Friday, I got a report that they drilled down to 9,500 feet and found lots of gas and liquid which is presumably the black gold. Is drilling down so far a good sign or not? It’s a fracking operation and they have about 170,000 acres. The broker reckons that if the drilling shows promise they can offload that at $50,000 an acre to the majors. Is that possible?

doesn’t matter that the measure was in furlongs and chains as those measurements were never really used

Huh? They were used as much as pretty much any other measure.

Chain is possibly the one imperial measure that is never going to go away.
It is everywhere. Heck I still talk & think chains in daily conversation, as do kids who’ve never learned imperial.

One week to go. Do you think the new Mrs Albo has rung Chloe for the curtain measurements or made her own while Albo was out with his minders?

The grigsock mind moves in mysterious ways.

Huh? They were used as much as pretty much any other measure.

God you’re an oppositional drunken fuckwit. That malaria riddled shithole where you were brought may have used such a measure, but ~90% of the Australian population lives in the cities. Chains were only used in bikie brawls and not measure. So stop pretending it was a common measure in Australia, you dickhead. It wasn’t. Now just fuck off.

Roads in my jurisdiction are either three chain or ten chain wide. The fencelines won’t ever be moving.
I’ve seen some down in New South that are two chain (quite narrow).

It is everywhere. Heck I still talk & think chains in daily conversation, as do kids who’ve never learned imperial.

Oh yeah, I’ll go to Bunnings tomorrow and ask for a couple of chains of rope. Kids work there so I guess they’ll know what I’m asking for. Let you know how I go.

What a stupid comment:

Oh yeah, I’ll go to Bunnings tomorrow and ask for a couple of chains of rope.

JC, stick to your lane. Post something on how to iron ladies knickers or something.
Leave the outdoors stuff to men.

How many chains long is the Olympic 1600 m track race?

A cricket pitch is…….. one chain long.

Players of tiddlywinks may not be familiar with a cricket pitch.

Geoffrey Blainey in the Oz

Nice piece. It sounds like it could be back to the Korean war boom for Aussie farmers although I don’t know about the fertilizer situation.
I shouldn’t post it, but I will this time as it’s so good.

How Australian farmers may save tens of millions of lives

Hardly any of us have noticed that our country – seen as a pariah at the Glasgow climate summit last year – has quietly emerged as one of the worthier nations of the world.

The war in Ukraine is studded with shocks and surprises. The multitude of deaths, suffered especially by Russia, is much higher than was anticipated, and a global energy crisis is feared.

Even food supplies in impoverished parts of the world are a potential casualty of this conflict.

In Australia, hardly any of us have noticed that our country – seen as a pariah at the Glasgow climate summit last year – has quietly emerged as one of the worthier nations of the world. Australian children, who in primary school often are instructed that their country has so much of which to be ashamed, will have to be told that at present it is a global benefactor.
Read Next

The contrasting stories of farming and food production in Ukraine and Australia could teach us a lesson. Across Ukraine and the southwest corner of Russia is one of the world’s most extensive layers of that black soil the Russians call chernozem. Rich in decomposed plants, it is as fertile as a first-rate compost heap. Ukraine’s black soil occupies two-thirds of the arable land in a nation that has a higher proportion of arable land than all but two other countries on earth, Denmark and Bangladesh.

Indeed, the plains in the eastern half of Ukraine resemble one colossal farm. To the west the nation’s terrain is hilly, with a narrow strip of mountains, but the tallest peaks are not even as high as those in our own Snowy Mountains.

Ukraine’s 40 million inhabitants are entitled be proud of their farmers and fiercely indignant that their grain stores and soils are being wrecked in places by Russian soldiers. In contrast, Australia’s farmers have a very different set of achievements. Their country has the world’s largest area of soil with major deficiencies and is the custodian of huge areas of desert, yet this year it is helping to feed about 50 countries and tens of millions of the most malnourished people.
Members of a demining team of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine prepare to destroy an unexploded missile remaining near the village of Hryhorivka. It’s planting season in Ukraine and in addition to a spiking need for fuel and fertiliser, demining teams are flooded with calls to destroy the unexploded missiles or mines in fields, which in some places have wounded or killed farmers.
Members of a demining team of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine prepare to destroy an unexploded missile remaining near the village of Hryhorivka. It’s planting season in Ukraine and in addition to a spiking need for fuel and fertiliser, demining teams are flooded with calls to destroy the unexploded missiles or mines in fields, which in some places have wounded or killed farmers.

To praise Australia is not to belittle Ukraine. In a normal year Ukrainian wheat, maize and barley feed a host of people in distant lands; half of its cereal exports are shipped to Asia.

The damage to Ukraine’s diverse grain-belt with its wheat and corn and barley is causing increasing concern. Many farms are damaged severely; explosives and booby traps have been laid on the edge of some farmlands; and grain from last year’s harvest is pilfered from silos and trucked away by the invading Russians. Even the lumbering farm machinery, similar to the costly combine-harvesters in our wheatbelt, has been stolen by the invaders.

The harvest, normally at its busiest in just a few months, will certainly be much lower than last year’s and there is no likelihood that the surplus usually set aside for export will even reach the crucial Black Sea ports.

Mariupol, now a wreck of a city, is a wheat port as well as a hub of heavy industry. The biggest wheat port, Odesa, and various oil and wheat facilities and high-rise apartments have been hit by Russian missiles. Only as old as Sydney, this celebrated city with its terrace of 192 stone steps leading to the waterfront (I once tried and failed to count them) was the setting of a highlight in the history of cinema, the Battleship Potemkin mutiny.

The Black Sea is easily blockaded. The damaged Russian warship that sensationally was sunk in mid-April while being towed to Odesa had been a blockader. If the war soon ends, the control of the Black Sea will become crucial. If Russian President Vladimir Putin is the victor he will totally command all the wheat ports of the Black Sea, but he will not thereby control the narrow and all-important strait near Gallipoli. Both sides of the strait are owned by Turkey. Almost certainly the US and west European powers can block the strait at the Mediterranean end if necessary.

We must remember that the battles at Gallipoli in 1915 were fought close to that narrow entrance from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.

A major aim of the British, French and Anzac forces landing at Gallipoli was to seize and open up the narrow strait called the Dardanelles so Allied cargo ships could carry munitions, military equipment and essential supplies to Odesa and so onwards by railway to strengthen Russia’s huge but ill-equipped army fighting the German and Austro-Hungarian forces on the war’s eastern front.

If there had been a victory at Gallipoli, those same ships could have carried as return cargo the wheat and barley from Ukraine and other Russian territories.
A Ukrainian army officer inspects a grain warehouse shelled by Russian forces near the frontlines of Kherson Oblast in Novovorontsovka, Ukraine. Russia has been accused of targeting food storage sites in frontline areas and generally degrading Ukraine’s wheat production, potentially causing a global shortage.
A Ukrainian army officer inspects a grain warehouse shelled by Russian forces near the frontlines of Kherson Oblast in Novovorontsovka, Ukraine. Russia has been accused of targeting food storage sites in frontline areas and generally degrading Ukraine’s wheat production, potentially causing a global shortage.

During World War I, in London and Paris, Berlin and Vienna, a grave shortage of food – and the risk of rioting by hungry civilians – was widely feared. In 1917 the revolutions in Russia and in 1918 the military defeat of Germany both stemmed from a shortage of bread as well as from defeat in battles on land. We rightly praise John Monash for his victories against the German army on French soil in 1918, in the last months of the war; but the long blockade conducted by the British navy in the North Sea had already weakened German morale at home and in the trenches by inflicting hunger on millions of its people.

Even today in numerous African and Middle East nations a shortage of bread is viewed as a potential cause of civil unrest. The price of bread was often high in the period 2007 to early 2012, and hunger possibly contributed to the Arab Spring and the wave of political unrest in North Africa.

One fact rarely noticed is that three of the world’s five largest wheat importers in 2020 were Muslim nations. Egypt was the largest, followed by Indonesia and Turkey. A fourth nation, Nigeria, has recently become more a Muslim than a Christian nation.

Over 27 million tons of grains are stuck in Ukraine and unable to leave the country due to infrastructure challenges…

The other nation standing in the top five importers of wheat is China. Though it has revolutionised its agriculture since the famines of the early 1960s, it cannot feed every one of those hundreds of million inhabitants who prefer wheat to rice, and so it has to import a small percentage of the massive quantities of wheat that it mills into flour. If we turn to rice, a grain that is high in moisture and low in calories compared with wheat, China is also a leading producer and a minor exporter, though far behind India which, to its credit, has become the globe’s largest exporter of rice.

China and India as hot spots of malnutrition have been replaced by Arab nations in a typical year. According to an authoritative report issued in June last year, one-quarter of Arab children under the age of five were defined as stunted.

Egypt and its 101 million people – a larger population than any nation in the EU and still growing swiftly – now depend on foreign wheat. The country’s local output of grain always lags far behind the imports. In Cairo the government operates the ingenious Baladi subsidy scheme, which provides – largely from imported grain – cheap bread for more than half of the population.

Ukraine and Russia in recent years have supplied most of the grain used by Egyptian flour mills and bakehouses. Here is an exceptional somersault in world history. Egypt’s Nile Valley was a major supplier of wheat to the Roman Empire in its heyday. In the past decade, however, millions of Egyptians would have starved to death without the frequent arrival of food ships, some of which come from Australia.

The Middle East nation that depends most heavily on Australian grain is Yemen. One of the poorest nations in the world, its farms are noted more for their sheep and goats, asses and camels than their cereals, and its schools are notorious for the low attendance of girls. Yemen’s population, doubling every 20 or so years, has already passed Australia’s.

Lying near the entrance to the Red Sea, its main maritime city, Aden, was once a port of call for nearly all migrant ships bound from Europe to Australia. Today ships arriving from Australia are loaded with grain and in some years Yemen has been the third largest export destination for Australian wheat, and often exceeding Indonesia.

In the past two years especially, we have been a huge exporter of wheat to East Asia. In Indonesia, countless families who ate their daily bread or noodles made from wheat grown mainly in what is now the war zone in Ukraine now consume bread from Australian white-wheat flour.
The past two years have been record-breaking for Australian wheat and barley and canola crops. Picture: Zoe Phillips

In some months, Indonesia is the world’s largest importer of wheat, while The Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and now China are also large importers of Australian wheat. Australia is one of the five or six main wheat and barley exporters in the world and a major power if a world food shortage should arise.

A forthright warning has come from the UN official who heads the World Food Program. A former Republican governor of South Carolina, David Beasley informed the Security Council on March 30 of the possibility of the worst food crisis since World War II – a warning, however, that he did not substantiate. He glimpsed, if the dislocating war continued for many months, “a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe”. He has since repeated the warning.

Much of Beasley’s gloom reflects the situation in Ukraine’s wheat belt where brave farmers were walking away from their crops to be volunteer soldiers. He called Ukraine “the bread basket of the world”. But Ukraine has never been the world’s largest grower and exporter of wheat. In a normal year its total production of wheat, though vital, is below that of the EU, China, India and Russia.

Beasley was courageous in pointing to a flood of refugees that might arise in famished lands if the military crisis persisted. Though he did not elaborate, it is possible that tensions in the overpopulated nations on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean might well propel a flow of refugees towards Spain, Italy and Greece.

We know that since February, trains packed with Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed by Poland, Hungary and other neighbouring nations. But if the war continues, the famished refugees reaching Europe’s Mediterranean shores in overloaded boats are even less likely to be welcomed.

In the past five years Italy has turned back 82,000 illegal migrants who made the short voyage from Libya to Sicily. Likewise Angela Merkel’s experiment of welcoming into Germany one million Middle Eastern refugees was so controversial that it is unlikely to be repeated.

To Africa, Russia was the largest supplier of wheat in 2020. Then follow France, Ukraine and Canada; Australia also ships wheat. Though Africa’s host of small farmers produce in total more cereals than are imported, the incoming ships crammed with wheat are crucial in a crisis.

In the total scheme of things, the food grains imported into Africa are far outweighed by the food that comes from other plants grown in the myriad African vil­lages. Likewise in Pakistan it is estimated that more than half of the nation’s wheat is consumed by the same family members who grow it. Of course they can’t eat it all because bags of grain have to be set aside as seed for the next season’s sowing.
From Nigerian airlines to Malawi bakers, African countries are feeling the pain of Ukraine’s crisis as supply disruptions hike inflation and oil prices push up fuel costs.
From Nigerian airlines to Malawi bakers, African countries are feeling the pain of Ukraine’s crisis as supply disruptions hike inflation and oil prices push up fuel costs.

In this simple old-time world, if a harvest is poor, a government will try to import grain. As shipments from the Black Sea are highly unlikely, the Third World nations that urgently need wheat will pay dearly for it on the world market in the following months – even after a ceasefire or a fragile period of peace begins in eastern Europe.

I detect one justification for optimism around the world. Despite the fear that climate change cannot yet be coped with, and despite the knowledge that the world’s population is soaring and thus leading to more emissions of carbon dioxide, one fact is rarely mentioned. The world’s population has increased by about 50 per cent since 1990 or since the end of the Cold War, but the world’s production of food has increased at a faster pace.

In our nation, the gap in attitudes between city and countryside is wider than ever, and in a city-dominated election campaign the farms and their contribution to the economy are barely touched on. Yet we hardly hear the news that agriculture here – highly efficient and innovative by world standards – has just experienced two prolific harvests. Last summer in Western Australia and NSW the wheat harvest, for example, has been sensational.

Thus the lives of tens of millions of adults and children on the far side of the equator will be saved or prolonged.

The past two years have been record-breaking for Australian wheat and barley and canola crops, in aggregate. It is almost certain that no matching period in our history has been so productive. While the recent floods in northern NSW have been devastating, and are seen by some scientists as proof that our climate is somewhat out of control, there is hardly a mention of the fact the grain harvests in vast areas of inland Australia have been wonderful and a reason for intense satisfaction.

Geoffrey Blainey has written 40 books. His most recent is Before I Forget: An Early Memoir.

Gez, Bush, it sounds like you guys (and other farmers) are going to have a few great years growing stuff. Lot’s of luck you and make billions. It sounds to me like it’s back to the Korean war.
French fashion meets the Aussie farmer
There was a funny story that I read or watched a docu ( I forget) some while ago about the history of Christian Dior. In early up to the mid 50s or so, Australia was the largest export market for Christian Dior. That’s quite an accomplishment considering there was also the US. But we were the biggest. And then I put 2 and 3 together and came up with 7. I recall how farmers and their wives would make trips to Melbourne and Sydney spending up big after the sales. Farmers wives were Christian Dior’s largest customer base at the time. Incredible, as it was in the 50s.

But look how export oriented the Europeans are.

Apologies the Blainey piece is so long.

Rosie

Keep in mind what Driller says, because he’s like General Motors. Driller’s truck stop is the marker for Australian hospitality. Like GM used to be, if Driller sneezes, the entire Australian hospitality industry catches a cold.

H1 wheat on the way up again.

Sancho Panzer says:
May 14, 2022 at 8:22 pm

Didn’t know that.

I remember being told that was when wool was worth a pound a pound.
It was worth salvaging the wool from dead sheep.

Walk through this. We very likely sold premium wool to the French who then turned into extremely expensive female clothing, sold to the wives of the blokes who owned the sheep. The pound for a pound ended up costing the farmer dudes a pound of wool for 100 quid ! 🙂 Somehow the frogs made out like bandits.

Turtlehead, except “it” didn’t make a comment regarding the past when we were imperial as I responded directly to Driller’s comment about the present, you nasty thickheaded kunt.

Here’s his comment again.

Heck I still talk & think chains in daily conversation, as do kids who’ve never learned imperial.

The reason I never have anything to do with you is because I don’t respect what you have to say. You’re a thicko and actually a blight on this blog and this last comment speaks to that in spades.

(Now let me predict we see some nasty passive aggressive comment about me in the middle of the night under an alias, because I hurt your feelings. It’s not like it isn’t a pattern )

Seriously, you’re like a neurotic sheila.

Top marks to you Winston. My dad did a stint as chainman.
Purely coz the SG turned up without an offsider, & he stepped in for a few days.

Those blokes (two-man survey teams from the SGs) are one public service cohort who oughta be immortalised in a public statue.

Pound a pound wool.
Korean War and lots of woollen uniforms to stop soldiers freezing to death.

But I’d guess the very high premium grade went to Europe, which as the time was most likely France. I’m not sure, but I think the top Italian houses began to appear in the 60s.

I remember being told that was when wool was worth a pound a pound.

Snort, cackle.
We were in Harrods food hall in the late 1980’s.
Mrs Panzer points to the lobster and says, “Hey, that’s not too bad”.
I said to her, “That’s not dollars per kilogram. It’s pounds per pound.”

JCsays:

May 14, 2022 at 9:09 pm

I believe Zegna owns a sheep farm in Tasmania producing very high quality wool for its own mills.

There is a micron count (dunno the number) which is the threshold.
Above that number and it is scratchy.
Below that number it doesn’t irritate the skin.

Posted simply because it’s beautiful

Ethical Skeptic
@EthicalSkeptic
If you have any doubts…

or, have the integrity to stand up and say ‘Maybe we have a problem…’