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Old 06-30-2020, 10:27 PM   #291
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip View Post
Snip

A semi regular visiting metal smith, or someone hawking similar? Considered neutral in any conflicts between clans or settlements, etc? Acolytes of an Orcish equivalent to Hephaestus?
Snip
Considerations relating to this.
Anyone working with timber or stone is going to need some repair work done on their tools on a daily basis.
If the local tools are more like those of the iron age then the repair work may involve heating and reshaping many of the tools.
Charcoal is difficult to transport long distances, so importing tools is likely.
The local timber may burn hot enough for rudimentary smith work.

Just throwing around some ideas.
Smith's being considered neutral sounds interesting to me, there are certain correlations with smiths traditionally having skills and knowledge that are considered mystical (ish) with rumours and legends tied to the profession.

Playing with the acolyte idea smiths might take the place of shamans or the religeous practitioners in society.

As to the boundary between farming and society, there is a vast grey area between the two, not to mention numerous intetactions. So don't bother tempering your comments, I'd rather have more input. Even unrelated information helps me to consider the topic de jeur from another angle.
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Old 07-01-2020, 02:56 AM   #292
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Turns out that "shirasu" means "fry", so that's 15 tons of baby eel or "glass eel", which of course would turn into a much, much larger yield of adult. That was the context I was missing.
Glass eels have an average weight of just over 16 grams and bigger eels might weigh 20kgs so a thousand fold increase in size. (Up to 40kgs in some cases). (New Zealand species in this case)

Global eel aquaculture is between 230,000 tons and 250,000 tons. Not counting wild catch.

The orc example is something between aquaculture and trapping, with eels being concentrated into pools and fed scraps. Then the larger ones are filtered out and eaten or smoked for later consumption.
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Old 07-01-2020, 03:40 AM   #293
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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... don't bother tempering your comments, I'd rather have more input. Even unrelated information helps me to consider the topic de jeur from another angle.
No wuckers. Unrelated Information is my middle name...

Here's a bit of text about traditional Australian eel farming. I'll see if I can rustle up something a bit more useful.

EDIT: Historical SE Australian eel traps.
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Old 07-02-2020, 10:53 PM   #294
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

The other thing to note about eel fisheries, is that AFAIK they don't produce all year round. Instead, they produce a seasonal/episodic glut, and then are then dormant for the rest of the year.
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Old 07-02-2020, 11:27 PM   #295
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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The other thing to note about eel fisheries, is that AFAIK they don't produce all year round. Instead, they produce a seasonal/episodic glut, and then are then dormant for the rest of the year.
Yeah, that much I had sorted, but, neglected to explain fully*. As I understand it the eels were caught small and then fed for growth or maintenance until the reached the desired size and were harvested.
While the catch season was short, the eels could be kept live for some time.

*Another conundrum of mine, how much detail is too much.
I'm currently writing up a gardening system for elven agriculture that draws on pre-historic farming techniques and those used in permaculture with a side order of camping practices. If I put in a couple of sentences for each source as well as one or two more on the half a dozen or so growth factors I've considered. Well it's a lot of word count for what is at the end of the day only one of the many systems used.
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Old 07-03-2020, 02:31 PM   #296
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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(SNIP)

One stock unit equals the amount of food required for a ewe with a single lamb during the slowest growing period of the year.

(SNIP)
Interesting, and it definitely indicates the primary form of livestock in your area.

In North America, we use what is called an "Animal Unit" (AU), which is defined as a 1000-lb beef cow (454 kg) with or without a nursing calf.

We also use a measure, "AUM" (Animal Unit per Month) to describe grazing quality.

Everything else is measured from those two basic units. So, a mature horse is 1.20 AU; a mature pig is 0.25 AU; a mature ewe is 0.20 AU; a mature goat is 0.10 AU.

So, here in Colorado (where I learned way too much about this, about 22-23 years ago...), a pasture produces (on the average) of about 1,600 lbs (726 kg) of forage, per acre.

A 1,000 lb (454 kg) cow needs 800 lbs (363 kg) of forage available per grazing, each month. So, in Colorado, (given that you need to keep half the forage intact, so as to regenerate the pasture in 30 days or so...), one AU needs one acre of dry-land pasture, at least -- if you're a little lucky.

This can vary widely, throughout the state. Out in the semi-arid, short-grass prairie of northeastern Colorado, it can drop as low as 300 lbs (136 kg) per acre once you get away from the Platte River -- and few people bother to graze. They use hay and silage maize in feed-lots.

Up in the mountains, the forage quality is actually really good -- it's just that there aren't very many flat bits, and the grazing season is really short. A lot of the field acreage in the mountain "parks" is used for hay -- which sells really well, here.

By comparison, the forage quality in Kentucky, where I spent my childhood, comes in at about 1,700 lbs (771 kg) per acre for tall fescue, consistently and reliably, if you do absolutely nothing to it.

Hit it with 90 lbs of nitrate fertilizer per acre, and those yields double. So, if you graze at the recommended 50 percent, and rotate the stock every week or so, you can raise twice the AU (plus a bit) on the same acreage.
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Old 07-03-2020, 04:03 PM   #297
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Interesting, and it definitely indicates the primary form of livestock in your area.
<snip>
I feel an urge to defend NZ and say it's not all sheep farming, but seeing as I'm a sheep and beef farmer I havn't really got a leg to stand on.

Stock units are almost outdated as the primary form of measurement, but they are useful for shorthand and simplified purposes. As you say the weight of feed in a given area is more accurate, It's Kgs of dry matter per hectare here. (Unless you use metabolic calculations).

Though for these examples I tend to favour stock units because they are simple, they line up with what's already published under gurps and I know enough to adjust the system as required.

The Feed budgets that I use professionally factor "when" into the equation as well as the quality of the pasture. As a for instance I'm just getting ready to add urea to my lambing paddocks. The calculation to determine the economic value of the endeavour involved how much nitrogen* was in the urea, how much more pasture that would grow and of what type, when the lambs would get the most benefit from it, how the energy content would alter their weight gain, when they would be ready to finish and what they would probably get in $ per kg when they finished. Then compare that to interest rates and determine what's the best spend.......

(Summary, when the lambs are born they will get more soft grass at the height they prefer)

Of course the measurement techniques have changed to, I use a sward stick but there are other options, such as trailers and drones. Unless you want the automation on the animal side instead, then you can put in GPS, RFID ear tags that have among other things an accelerometer in them that track how often each animal takes a bite to eat. (This would cost me about $44,000 to do my cattle).

This data would be processed in something like Overseer which may soon become standard as nitrogen calculations are soon to be mandatory.

* as well as calculations around total nitrogen, which factors in soil type, soil microbes, animal type and ground cover to ensure I don't have excess nitrogen run off.
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Old 07-07-2020, 02:31 AM   #298
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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I'm happy to have a world building thread spin off from orc agriculture. I agree that just using the orc system as a base is likely the best approach. If I'm too slow starting the thread anyone can feel free to get the ball rolling.
I'll bash something together tonight before we go off the boil.
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Old 08-10-2020, 09:36 PM   #299
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

Speaking of alpacas...

https://www.theage.com.au/national/a...10-p55kcp.html
Alpacas provide new hope for a COVID-19 cure
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Old 08-29-2020, 01:19 AM   #300
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Default Re: [ATE] Farming example

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Farming in SPACE!
E, I'm currently putting together a battle star Galactica style ark fleet for a game, but I'm running into some difficulties. Retrofitting mature aquaponics into the class of ship that has the facilities needed is giving me 150 persons worth of food a day from each of its 4 environmental bays but it's requiring 750 man hours each day, assuming 12 hour shifts that's just over 60 people per bay or 240 people per ship that's making food for 600 people. That 20% of the population working in food production isn't unreasonable, but that's only achieved by in the longterm unsustainable 12 hour work shifts.

So what's needed to shrink that 5 man hours a day per person number?
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