Pyramid #3/52: Low-Tech II

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The "soft" downside is that people get damned tired of eating poultry for every meal

Considering that peasants and serfs were often lucky to have food, I'd say that this is a problem for only a few.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Considering that peasants and serfs were often lucky to have food, I'd say that this is a problem for only a few.

Agreed! I offered it mostly as cause for why a landowner might not want to focus on poultry.

[Agemegos]

There are some interesting reflections on the price of poultry (and of pork and dairy foods) in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 11, ¶202 – ¶205

Originally Posted by Adam Smith

I.11.202
Thus in every farm the offals of the barn and stables will maintain a certain number of poultry. These, as they are fed with what would otherwise be lost, are a mere save-all; and as they cost the farmer scarce any thing, so he can afford to sell them for very little. Almost all that he gets is pure gain, and their price can scarce be so low as to discourage him from feeding this number. But in countries ill cultivated, and, therefore, but thinly inhabited, the poultry, which are thus raised without expence, are often fully sufficient to supply the whole demand. In this state of things, therefore, they are often as cheap as butcher's-meat, or any other sort of animal food. But the whole quantity of poultry, which the farm in this manner produces without expence, must always be much smaller than the whole quantity of butcher's-meat which is reared upon it; and in times of wealth and luxury what is rare, with only nearly equal merit, is always preferred to what is common. As wealth and luxury increase, therefore, in consequence of improvement and cultivation, the price of poultry gradually rises above that of butcher's-meat, till at last it gets so high that it becomes profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. When it has got to this height, it cannot well go higher. If it did, more land would soon be turned to this purpose. In several provinces of France, the feeding of poultry is considered as a very important article in rural œconomy, and sufficiently profitable to encourage the farmer to raise a considerable quantity of Indian corn and buck-wheat for this purpose. A middling farmer will there sometimes have four hundred fowls in his yard. The feeding of poultry seems scarce yet to be generally considered as a matter of so much importance in England. They are certainly, however, dearer in England than in France, as England receives considerable supplies from France. In the progress of improvement, the period at which every particular sort of animal food is dearest, must naturally be that which immediately precedes the general practice of cultivating land for the sake of raising it. For some time before this practice becomes general, the scarcity must necessarily raise the price. After it has become general, new methods of feeding are commonly fallen upon, which enable the farmer to raise upon the same quantity of ground a much greater quantity of that particular sort of animal food. The plenty not only obliges him to sell cheaper, but in consequence of these improvements he can afford to sell cheaper; for if he could not afford it, the plenty would not be of long continuance. It has been probably in this manner that the introduction of clover, turnips, carrots, cabbages, &c. has contributed to sink the common price of butcher's-meat in the London market somewhat below what it was about the beginning of the last century.

The point here is that poultry fatten on scraps, waste, spills, and gleanings which they collect themselves, which are produced in proportion to the production of staple foods and the consumption of the household. Poultry is virtually free up to the amount that is supported by unavoidable waste: raising less that that amount means less production with no reduction in costs and no increase in alternative production. Or looking at that from the other side, raising poultry is a terrifically cheap way to produce food up to the point that is supported by the irreducible waste of handling grain, preparing food etc. But if you try to produce poultry in greater amounts than are supported free as a by-product of agriculture and household food production, at that point you have to feed them food that you could put to other uses. You have to grow food for chickens, and food for the oxen that plough the fields where you grow the food for the chickens. And once you start doing that poultry becomes dramatically more expensive. It is an error to look at the cost of raising poultry in a system in which they are a cheap by-product of farming and to suppose that poultry could substitute for other production at the same rate of cost.

Remember that unlike cattle and sheep chickens cannot subsist on the grass that grows in the waste ground, and that unlike pigs they cannot eat the mast in beech and oak forests and woods. Cheap production of poultry is limited in proportion to the cultivation of fields.

The economics of ducks in wet rice agriculture is even more interesting (turned out into the paddy-fields they eat pests, fertilise the rice with their droppings, and actually increase production, thus demonstrating negative cost up to a certain proporition with rice production), but sadly Smith was not aware of the facts.



Anyway, the chief reason that landowners didn't specialise in raising poultry was that it is only cheap as a joint product with grain. Specialise, and it becomes expensive.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

I didn't go into it here because the article was already complicated enough (though it was addressed briefly in 3/33), but the prestige of a given crop is going to be a significant economic factor. However, it's one based on culture, not technology. Luxury pricing is going to hit some of these values very hard. In a setting which looks vaguely like historical Europe, the beef and pork prices are going to be somewhat higher, and the chicken prices maybe somewhat lower. And in a world that contains something like a historical Europe paying out mad dosh for spices, those price increases can percolate back through the supply chain so that even producers see a nice price bump. But, of course, those adjustments have to be campaign-specific.

There's one other small thing I didn't factor in since I had zero data, but some things travel terribly. Spices, you can pack up in a chest and ship across the continent. Animals are different. Cattle and pigs can be driven to market, but the exercise burns off some fat, so you need to either sell animals who weigh less (and get less money) or fatten them up again (which costs you more). Then again, since they're self-propelled, you don't need to pay much to transport them, so it's probably a wash. Chickens, though, have to be carried to market and need to be fed grain along the way because they can't forage. That may be below any reasonable level of resolution when taking chickens from a village to a nearby town, but might make it less than profitable to buy chickens in Baghdad and sell them in Samarkand.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Considering that peasants and serfs were often lucky to have food, I'd say that this is a problem for only a few.

In most areas of Europe that wasn't quite true. City people were lucky to have food and everyone had food issues in the winter or in the occasional famine . On the whole outside of some real horrible places, peasants ate a decent if monotonous diet . Nearer to the era of Black Death after the long summer, things did get tight. Humans kind of reached carrying capacity

There were a lot if reasons peasants usually ate , social compact, the church, peasant uprisings and just common sense. Hungry and sick peasants meant the nobles starved too.

The real awfulness started in modern times with labor specialization, urbanization and surplus population.

Lastly it is suggested that British peasants were better off than many modern Africans!

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandeve...england_twice/

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Considering that peasants and serfs were often lucky to have food, I'd say that this is a problem for only a few.

Oh, those terrible Middle Ages!

[jacobmuller]

Armor design, the Ultratech stats.
I get the following:
Material WM Cost DR/inch
Ballistic 1.14 $150 40/60/80*
Ablative 1.5 $150 80/120*
Reflec 0.38 $150 65
Bioplas 0.57 $600 50
Energy 1.14 $500 100
MaxDR is just 1/2 DR/inch (or 0.555')
You'll need UT for the Notes;
The ballistic DRs are the vs pi & Imp values and TL dependant; the other values depend on thickness but none are *4.
The ablative DRs likewise.
Retroreflective is CF+9 and DR*2
All the numbers depend on assuming that Tacsuits are the thickest you can have but still be flexible, which the article rates as 25% of MaxDR.
I don't know where to begin with Rigid armor, eg is heavy clamshell the thickest or mid-range?

[Mr Frost]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

...I'm a bit troubled by the way poultry farming blows comparable cash crops out of the water. No setup, tiny land requirement, highest revenue, no drawbacks listed.

Well , It's a very fowl industry ...

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Mr Frost

Well , It's a very fowl industry ...

Groans.

So, TBC, were we meant to think of a Harn supplement when reading your article? Because it seemed like GURPS Harnmanor to me.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Love the Lord of the Manor stuff but I'm a bit troubled by the way poultry farming blows comparable cash crops out of the water. No setup, tiny land requirement, highest revenue, no drawbacks listed.

From experience here chicken farming really is amazingly efficient and other than predators and disease, pretty issue free.