Why does Europe have all the cool small farming stuff..

[Ziptie]

First the small walk behind tractors with the mini combines and balers. Now this is a cool idea..
http://www.europedairysystems.com/en...mobistar-2g-2/

Basically it is a a complete mobile outdoor milking systems. How I ran across it is trying to find out if their is any type of lift system for cows. It would be cool if you could find one that would lift the cows to different heights due to operators being different heights or cow vs goat.

Anyone seen anything in the US that could lift a cow? Won't then have to worry about ramps and such.

[FarmboyBill]

Id say, its got a lot going for it. Specially that you can rent or lease it.
I don't like the idea of hooking up BEHIND the cows. bad accidents happen there.
Since there not getting any feed while in there, I have to wonder how hard it REALLY is to get them in there. Just watching it, I have the idea they had a feed trough there for a few days to get the cows prepped. They seemed to be looking for something while in there.

[FarmboyBill]

In answer to your question, Cause Europe has a majority of small farms, land acreage wise, and we don't.

[Darren]

Farmers in Europe also farm steeper slopes and have smaller fields in some areas than may be typical farmed in this country. Some equipment has been developed to utilize older methods of storage. An example is the use of a self loading hay wagon.

[eruehr]

There was an Amish guy from Kentucky at the Family Farm Field Day in Sugarcreek a couple of years ago who built something just like this - on a trailer - had a small milkhouse w/ tank and wash setup and everything - drive it out to the pasture, fire up the diesel engine and milk. I don't have any of the contact information. Sadly.
Horse Progress Days are coming up - you'd be amazed at some of the creative small farm solutions they'll have on display there. Mt. Hope, OH July 4-5. If you're anywhere nearby it's really worth going! They have it in different places every year on a 4-5 year (or so) rotation.

[DaleK]

There are a lot of parlours in N. America that take a simpler solution, the cows stay at one level and the pit floor can be raised or lowered using air bags or hydraulics to suit the operator height.
European farmers, particularly small ones, get so much subsidy money thrown at them they tend to go immediately to complicated and expensive answers to problems, while we do things more creatively with less.
I know of a few portable parlours around, mostly owned by dealers for emergencies like barn fires

[DaleK]

Soooo anyway.... I'm betting the smallest one, the 1x6, you MIGHT be able to get for $125,000......

[vicker]

Because we live in a capitalist society that has evolved into a society that feeds off of consumerism. Our products are designed not to work, or to break after kinda working for a short time. You can't make money in our society with a product that works and is cheap and dependable. If you see such a product, you should grab it quick, before the company disappears.

[Ziptie]

Originally Posted by eruehr

There was an Amish guy from Kentucky at the Family Farm Field Day in Sugarcreek a couple of years ago who built something just like this - on a trailer - had a small milkhouse w/ tank and wash setup and everything - drive it out to the pasture, fire up the diesel engine and milk. I don't have any of the contact information. Sadly.
Horse Progress Days are coming up - you'd be amazed at some of the creative small farm solutions they'll have on display there. Mt. Hope, OH July 4-5. If you're anywhere nearby it's really worth going! They have it in different places every year on a 4-5 year (or so) rotation.

Do you have any idea of what kind of hydraulics that he might have used for the lift? Looking for something that will just lift one cow at a time.

[geo in mi]

A couple of things are driving this kind of portable milking platform:

Milk is no longer just a breakfast drink that is produced and delivered locally. It has become a world-wide commodity product when converted to butter, cheese, yogurt, or when dried and distributed in bags or totes.

The EU has dictated (or voted) that there is more profit to farmers when milk is allowed to become a commodity export--sold throughout the world. So, in 2015, the milk quota system throughout European nations will be abolished, farmers will be able(some might say forced...) to maximize production, and milk products from Europe will compete globally--in a quite flexible, volatile world market.

European farms are indeed smaller in size, and unlike the US, there doesn't seem to be any trend of the big guys gobbling up the little guys. Dairy farms have remained grass-fed operations, rather than using the corn silage, CAFE, herd confinement systems of the US. European farmers market their milk through co-ops, as well. This excerpt, copied from an article from the website, http://www.teagasc.ie/publications/2...arch200905.pdf which also had a hand in designing the portable milking system, helps explain the European situation:


"Milk processing, utilisation and pricing

Seasonalise the processing industry

Currently most dairy processors operate throughout 12 months of the year, working at

close to full capacity for three to five months and less than full capacity for seven to

nine months. An alternative to this structure could be to have all processing
sites/plants processing milk in the peak months of April to July, and as the milk supplies
reduce, close processing sites/plants and divert the milk into fewer sites/plants. The
seasonalised processing site would incur the additional cost of transporting milk to
alternative sites, but would gain from the substantially reduced processing costs as well
as a more diversified product portfolio. The processing sites that remain open would
gain from being less seasonal, achieving economies of scale from processing greater
volumes of milk and, therefore, reducing their processing costs.

Greenfield processing site
An alternative option would be to construct a greenfield processing facility which

would be strategically located in relation to the number of milk producers and is

ideally located for distribution in order to keep transport costs down--...andtation

have the capacity to process a large proportion of the expected increased milk

production at peak with the phasing out of milk quotas; (b) be flexible to enable other

plants to shut down when the milk supply is low; and, (c) allow the industry to respond
to market demand with regard to the products being produced."

So, it's not just a cute novely; it's economics....as always.

geo

[Darren]

Originally Posted by vicker

Because we live in a capitalist society that has evolved into a society that feeds off of consumerism. Our products are designed not to work, or to break after kinda working for a short time. You can't make money in our society with a product that works and is cheap and dependable. If you see such a product, you should grab it quick, before the company disappears.

On a practical basis, the cost turns a lot of folks off. You always have the option of working with an importer and a broker to bring in equipment. Some of the European companies have tried to establish partnerships in this country and have been burned.

[geo in mi]

Dad built the first unique three-legged milk stool. He sawed off a ten inch log, nailed a board to it, and sat down on it to milk the cow. His legs were the other two.....

geo

[FarmboyBill]

We had 3 milk stools in the milk parlor. All one legged. They could have been there from my grandmoms first husbands time.
I have an idea that those cows were looking for something to eat when they came into the pen. I bet they got them hungry then walked them into the pen for awhile so they could eat from a trough placed in front of them. When they were ready, they removed the trough and shot the pic,

[Shayanna]

Originally Posted by vicker

Because we live in a capitalist society that has evolved into a society that feeds off of consumerism. Our products are designed not to work, or to break after kinda working for a short time. You can't make money in our society with a product that works and is cheap and dependable. If you see such a product, you should grab it quick, before the company disappears.

I was going to say "The Man." But Vickers said it better.

[Yvonne's hubby]

Originally Posted by DaleK

Soooo anyway.... I'm betting the smallest one, the 1x6, you MIGHT be able to get for $125,000......

Maybe.... but dont count on it. From the looks of it, more than cows are going to get milked by this outfit!

[rambler]

Originally Posted by vicker

Because we live in a capitalist society that has evolved into a society that feeds off of consumerism. Our products are designed not to work, or to break after kinda working for a short time. You can't make money in our society with a product that works and is cheap and dependable. If you see such a product, you should grab it quick, before the company disappears.

I understand what you are saying. But mostly;

Europe built very small fields by caring the many rocks into field boarders, and then let strong hedge rows grow in.

Their roads remained small, with buildings close in. Add in a big population per acre, and there just is no room there for bigger machinery. Road width and weight restrictions are strictly enforced on farm machinery in population dense Europe, while here in the USA we can run 20 foot wide machinery on our rural, space roads without bothering too many.

Then add in the very high govt subsidies most European countries give their farmers, so they can afford a lot of expensive small machines..... And then the govt regulation on those machines that comes with it.....

And so you end up with smaller machinery.

The real tiny stuff comes from China, if you want to see beat small stuff look there. Little combines, tractors, balers, etc. by the time it gets imported to here it so pretty spendy, but in China the normal was 2-10 acre farms, and so the machinery reflects that. I believe slowly that is changing, but again China subsidies the small tiny farms to keep people employed on the small lots, rather than moving to town en mass and creating a poor farm slum type of neighborhoods.

The different goals and solutions and govt involvement in questions like this are interesting.

Paul

[FarmboyBill]

Amd in Europe, IF NOT even China, The fields, many of them the boundries were set in the middle ages, and in a lot of cases, they havnt changed in a thousand years.

[wogglebug]

One of the main reasons Europe still has viable small farms is that the politicians there realise that they need votes. It seems that in the USA the polyticks prefer big money from big companies.

In Europe, they realise keeping families on farms, even if not the most profitable way of doing things on a micro-economic scale, does lots of good things. First, it keeps the voters where they can do the politicians the most good. Secondly, it keeps the money the small farmers make out in the community, where the multiplier effect is high. The same Euro may circulate through many hands, buying many goods and services, before it eventually gets banked against future need. Third, it keeps all those people out in rural areas, including and financed by the farmers, off the welfare rolls. This is one of the big things USAmericans don't realise about European welfare states. It works because the money is out in the community, circulating, and taxable many times. It also works because the farmers create a lot of what they need to live without having to pay for it, and the small communities in which they live also benefit through mutual barter and low-cost local markets, all of it non-taxable.

As I said, all this is unimaginable in the USA. In particular, it is unimaginable to US politicians, and anathema to their big-business masters. It's been said that the USA has the best politicians money can buy. That's probably true, but it's not setting the bar very high.

Some of the European pollies aren't great either, but at their worst they've been bought retail rather than wholesale. At their best, the only thing that might buy them is votes, and even then some of them will stand against the masses on a matter of principle, knowing it means their ouster at the next elections.

So, indirectly, we return to my original point. Europe has small farms because, in the big picture, that's better business than the small picture quarter-by-quarter bottom line that managers-on-a-bonus have managed to negotiate, and then with which they have managed to infect the political and even the judiciary and military organisations.

[eruehr]

Sorry - no hydraulics on the one I saw - just up and down the ramps!

Food security is another reason for the - to us seemingly crazy - subsidies european farmers get. Armed conflict is still kinda fresh in the minds of a lot of people and while the small farms might not be able to compete efficiently with megafarms in the US and South America, expensive, locally produced food looks a whole lot better than non-existent or non-available 'efficiently and cheaply' produced imports...

[FarmboyBill]

Nother thing, speaking of war. Those hedge rows in WW 1 and 2 helped slow down the advance of the allies, and helped the germans to retreat, and not rout. Since people havn t changed ibn 70years, the hedgerows are still important for defense. I doubt if they would stop tanks now, but they sure stopped them then.