<
https://civileats.com/2023/02/13/could-this-mobile-solar-powered-livestock-barn-reshape-the-corn-belt/>
"Last August, Zack Smith welcomed a group of farmers, agricultural researchers,
and investors to his mid-sized farm just south of the Iowa-Minnesota border for
a field day. It was warm out, shorts weather, and around 35 people sat on straw
bales listening as the young, fifth-generation farmer—who has gained a devoted
audience through Twitter and YouTube and welcomes curious visitors to his farm
every year—spoke about a critical turning point in his thinking.
The shift took place nearly three years ago as Smith—who was working off the
farm for a fertilizer company at the time—was talking with the Minnesota-based
farmer Sheldon Stevermer. “Corn was $2.75, beans were $7.25. We’re small
farmers who don’t have a lot of acres. [We were asking ourselves,] ‘Is it worth
staying in business?’” Smith recalls. The two were exchanging ideas and
Stevermer asked a third farmer, Lance Petersen, what he thought. “He bounced it
off Lance and he said, ‘What about putting a pen of sheep in between the
rows?’”
Stevermer has an engineering background and he and Smith decided to run with
Peterson’s idea. They got to work designing a farming system that involved
growing alternating rows of corn and strips of pasture that were wide enough to
move a mobile barn through. The plants in those rows also get exposed to more
sunlight than a standard canopy of corn or soy, resulting in higher yields per
plant. They called the result—a solar-powered barn that separately housed eight
sheep in the front, 10 hogs in the middle, and a 125 chickens in a trailing
chicken tractor—the ClusterCluck 5,000. They coined the term “stock cropping”
for the larger idea to have, as Smith puts it, “plants feeding animals, and
animals feeding plants.”
Since then, Smith has dedicated 5 acres on a plot of land Smith rents to
trialing the stock-cropper system. And he has worked with Illinois-based Dawn
Equipment to design a second, much lighter and more nimble iteration of the
barn: The ClusterCluck Nano runs on solar energy and can be moved with a phone
app. Now, Smith and Dawn Equipment CEO Joe Bassett are working on a third
iteration and actively pursuing outside investment.
The hope, says Smith, isn’t just to build a new type of farm equipment—it’s to
help farmers build soil health, cut down on water pollution, and usher in a new
approach to farming in the Corn Belt."
Via
The Fixer February 15, 2023:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/china-zero-covid-testing-booths-become-libraries/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
