Sunday, May 30, 2021

Farming today compared to the old way, part one.

WELCOME TO MENFRANCO GENERAL BLOG. Today we will talk about, Farming today compared to the old way, part one, from my Hub Pages life story articles. 
What you see here, must be a show off of harvester machines and how harvesting is done today. So we have to say that this photo is just an exaggeration, because it is too crowded with machines. Anyhow, here all we want to point out, is that harvesting was a lot in the old times. 
 

Welcome to our article, Farming today compared to the old way 

Dear readers, because this original article was too long to use in a single blog, we have divided it in two parts.

Anyhow, here we are going to talk about farming today compared to the old ways, because I can mentally see the great difference that it has made in our standard of living. So, I believe that today we are better off than we were before; but let me see how I can describe this difference. You see, I am writing about my life story, so, I mentally compare the ways of life of today to the ways of life in the past when I was young; for this reason, I have become aware that there is a great difference; in fact, the difference is so great that it is worth writing an entire article to explain my personal point of view.

Anyhow, we must acknowledge that this modern wheat farming in Australia, and in other parts of the world, it has slashed the present cost of living a lot, and this helps us to live a better life. We believe that this has happened because of the new farming machines available to the farmers, and the fertilizer available to them; so, farmers are able to produce wheat and other produce a lot cheaper than in the past, so, food has become cheaper, therefore, we are better off today in many ways.

In this article, we invite our readers to compare how different farming and farming life was at the time when I was young in the fifties, and also, how hard was life then because most of us had to work hard just to earn enough to feed ourselves and our families.

This difference that we are talking about applies to the farmers and the general public as well, because today it affects both in a beneficial way. So, there is a lot to be said about this great difference in cost and hardship or easiness, and this has happened during my life timelifetime. So, I believe that our standard of living has improved a lot, at least in the sense of being able to feed ourselves with wheat and other farm products, because the cost of farm products are more affordable today than in the past; so, let us compare the cost of living, perhaps for the sake of seeing where we have come from and how much we have improved since then.

Today we often wonder how easy it is to grow and harvest wheat, at least it seems so when we look at a video that shows harvest time in the wheat farms, we see a few harvester machines in a field collect the wheat in no time at all, and because of this speed of these wonderful combine harvester machine food is a lot cheaper today than it used to be; of course these machines are only part of the machinery that helps the farmers produce the wheat, because there are many more machines required. So, let us talk about some other machinery that the farmers require.

---------------------------------------

Some farmers' machinery. 

Now let us talk about the farmer’s machinery and the benefit that has come from them; of course, this is due to the industrial revolution that has started a long time ago, and last century has reached the farming communities improving it a lot. It seems to me that the farming sector has been one of the last communities that has benefited from the industrial revolution, anyhow, that doesn’t matter how it has worked out, because today we are better off, so, let us talk about these machines.

We can say that the most important machine in the farms is the tractor, as this machine can be used in all sorts of farming, in wheat farming the tractor is followed by the harvester machine and other devices to till the soil and to sow the seeds, and all these machines put together make farming a lot easier today, therefore, wheat can be produced a lot cheaper, this of course helps keep the price of bread and other wheat made products down, since wheat is the main food elements required in the western world to prepare food, therefore, this new way of farming helps a great deal just about everybody, since wheat is one of the main ingredients to make foods for us to eat, and we require lots of it.

Of course, if we want to talk about farming there is more to say than just wheat farming, because there are many other things that the bloke on the land can produce, see this link here-under how Wikipedia explains farming.

Agriculture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear readers, now that we have talked about these farmer’s machines, let us talk about wheat farming and the great benefit that we get from it; we must be happy about what is happening because it is a good thing for all of us; so, we want to point out that there is a great difference in the ways of living, and we are a lot better off today than we were when I was young, so, let us compare some of the benefits that we have achieved, since today the farmers can use these farm machines that the industrial revolution has made for us.

--------------------------------

Let us compare these benefits.  

Now, let us compare the great difference between today and the past. For comparison sake; today here in Australia there are a few places that a 600 gr loaf of bread costs you just one dollar, we know that this bread is sold at a very special price from these supermarket, in order to get the customers to the shop, but we wonder and we do not know how it can be done so cheap but they do it anyhow, this very low price of bread is possible only because the farmer can produce the wheat cheap for a start.

Then, because the wheat is cheap the price of bread can be cheap, the supermarkets make it even cheaper to attract customers, because the supermarkets have a price war to attract customers on bread and also on milk, so, we can buy a loaf of bread for one dollar and we can buy a two litre bottled milk for two dollars, that works out at one dollar per litre, again how they can do it I do not know, but they do it anyhow; so, there is plenty of cheap wholesome food around for us to enjoy, thanks to the farmers and the supermarkets. (We hope that this will last for a long time, but I have my doubts). Anyhow, I must point out that in the past, the price of bread and milk was a lot dear, in fact there have been times, when people were struggling to feed themselves, as we will explain before we finish writing this article.

But even though bread and milk is cheap beyond compare, there are people that still complain about the cost of living today, I know that what I am talking about here are only a few items and a lot more are needed to live well. But for comparison sake let us show you how easily we can afford to buy bread and milk to day, you see today, while I am writing this article for the first time, most people on the government old age pension in Australia receive about 700 dollars per fortnight, which would be about 50 dollars per day, they can easily afford to buy bread and milk and other food items.

Now that we have said how easy it is to buy bread and other staple food today, let us see how things were done in the past. You see, when I was young things were a lot harder than today, for sure we could not buy bread and milk as easy as we buy them today, because to produce these things took a lot more physical work than today, therefore, they were more expensive, they were so because the way of producing them was different, in order to show you what we mean, we are going to describe how wheat farming was done at the time when I was young, and how hard it was for some people just to have something to eat, even if it was just a piece of bread and butter, bread and milk, or bread and tomatoes or other basic things that one could find in the fields if you were in the farms. Anyhow, let me describe how farming was done then, in this following sub-article, farming the old ways, so, we can have a better understanding of the whole issue, and be able to compare the past with the present way of farming.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Farming the old way.  

Dear readers, to compare and explain how farming was done at the time when I was young, we are going to write here the way of farm life that was going on in those times; we know already that things have changed for the better since then, as we have written above, because of the tractor and new farming machinery that have come out since then, all due to the industrial revolution or progress; which we have experienced in the last hundred years or so, but when I was young there were a lot less advanced farming machine that could make farming easy, of course, the tractors were already there, but they were very expensive to buy for most of the small farmers, so, we had to do most things the old ways. Now let me tell you how life was in the farms of southern Italy in the early fifties and earlier.

It is a well-known fact that in those times and even now, there are two times during the year, when in the farms everybody is working hard and working very long hours; one of this was sowing time and the other is harvest time, let us start with sowing times. When I was young the working day at sowing time would start two hours before dawn, because we had to make the horses, mules and other animals ready for working in the fields, we had to feed them and water them as well, it had to be done in such a way that everything should be made ready to go into the fields at daybreak.

At that time of the year in the morning it was very cold and there are lots of frosty days, so, in the morning the outside temperature could be around zero or below, it is very hard then to harness the horses to the plough as everything one touches is so cold; but then when one gets going it is not so bad, because walking in the fields holding the plough in one hand and guiding the horses with the other hand is hard work and it makes one warm. This type of very hard work at sowing time goes on for about a month if the weather is good and perhaps it could be longer than a month. When the sowing is done then everything slows down again, but we had still to look after the farms’ animals and do other farming chores; see this article My farm life continues, where we describe what we did after sowing, and what we did during the winter time.

Now let us talk about harvest time, since this is the busiest time in the farms, because harvest time is when the farmers collect the fruits of their hard labor, so, there is no time to be wasted at harvest time, therefore, this was and is the most hectic time of the year for all the farmers, and it is a very worrying time too for the farmers, you see if something goes wrong all their work goes down the drain for the whole year, so to speak. Here we are talking about mostly how things were run in the farms when I was young.

Now let us say a few things about today farming, especially about wheat farming, because wheat is one of the most important produce that we need from farming, as we have already said at the beginning of this article. With wheat we make bread and pasta and other bakery products, therefore, it is the most important farm produce that we use. So, let us compare what is changed in wheat farming since I was young. 

Anyhow, I believe that this blog is long enough, so, we will continue with the second part of our article, in our next blog, Farming today compared to the old way, part two. Wheat harvest in the fifties, and the very old way. 

To see more click on this link, Farming today compared to the old way

See you soon. 

---------------------------

No comments: