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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 10 2016, @08:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the so-the-green-tractor-is-going-green? dept.

John Deere has released a video of an all-electric concept tractor in the lead-up to the SIMA Agribusiness show in France, pointing the way toward a zero-local-emissions tractor product in the future.

In some ways, tractors seem like an ideal candidate for electrification. Electric motors are great for generating the kinds of huge torque figures tractors require, and tractors are generally fairly short range vehicles that live in the same shed every night, making for convenient recharging. They're also very low-maintenance in comparison with diesel gear.

That's the thinking behind John Deere's SESAM (Sustainable Energy Supply for Agricultural Machinery) tractor, a gutted out JD 6R with a huge battery bank up front and dual electric motors developing up to 130 kilowatts (174 horsepower) of continuous power.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:37PM (#439699)

    But chickens eat stuff that we could eat. Cows can eat grass on/from land that's useless for anything else.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:02PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:02PM (#439711) Journal

    Chickens eat stuff we generally don't want to eat, like bugs.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:55PM (#439760)

    i just let chickens out of the coop for the first time in three days. (For reference, I'm in the Midwest, and it's 25°F (269 K) out.) They're running around eating grass, because they're sick of the corn-based feed they eat indoors. In late summer, they'll walk through the yard, stripping dandelion puffballs of their seeds before the wind can get them. Any time they're available, they delight in bugs of all sorts. (One in particular likes to stay out in the evening catching fireflies on the wing.) One fat Buff Orpington catches field-mice whenever she can (not often, as fat Orpingtons are slow and clumsy) and, with much straining, swallows them whole. My point is, chickens are absolutely omnivores.

    Some breeds of chickens are actually quite good at foraging on more-or-less useless land (in the summer, or climate permitting year-round), but of course, industrially produced chicken comes from special hybrid birds that gain about a pound per week, and live on feed made mostly from grain.

    Likewise, cattle can be raised to market on otherwise-useless grassland -- but industrially produced beef spend about half their lives on feedlots, being fed roughly one part grain and two parts roughage. The roughage can come from waste products such as corn stalks, but it can also come from grain-competing crops like alfalfa.

    Either way, it seems to be economically advantageous to grow the feed over a wide area, then feed it to a condensed animal population, rather than distributing the animals over the ground necessary to feed them. And, at least with the current system of subsidies, taxation, etc., that benefit seems to outweigh the benefit of being able to use less valuable land for pasture.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:27PM (#439772)

    Cows can eat grass on/from land that's useless for anything else.

    Right. Here's news for you. Lots of cow diet is non-grass these days, at least in places like US. Where do you think all that corn is going? Hint: it goes to ethanol plants and then the protein residue goes to cattle (non-fermented corn is even worse). That's how you get the nasty strains of E.coli. too.