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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Chinese metal scientists announced they had developed a plow using a new steel alloy.
Plow was initially used in China over 2,000 years ago, centuries earlier than in Europe. However, Chinese farmers nowadays would rather pay over the odds for imported plows because of their better quality and durability.
The situation may soon change, thanks to the new research.
Yan Desheng, of the Institute of Metal Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the new metal was developed on the basis of boron steel, with micro-alloying elements and fine carbide added, so as to increase its hardness while keeping its high ductility.
The new material had been used to make over 1,000 farming tools, such as moldboard plows and rotary blades.
Source: China.org.cn
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @05:58AM (13 children)
Is this like carbon fiber horse buggy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @06:08AM
Did you just invent a better buggy? Quick, patent your idea, and sell to the Amish.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @06:13AM (11 children)
You need to plow for most crops. Some GMO plants don't really need it, which saves diesel fuel and soil erosion.
A plow is also good for removing land mines. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @06:18AM (3 children)
My operation is 100% hydroponic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @07:11AM (1 child)
Tell us more about your marijuana business.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday May 19 2017, @10:11AM
or tomatoes https://ag.arizona.edu/hydroponictomatoes/ [arizona.edu]
or lettuce http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Hydroponic-Lettuce [wikihow.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by c0lo on Friday May 19 2017, @10:37AM
Well, even so... how do you remove the mines?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @08:54AM
> You need to plow for most crops.
No, very few plants -need- freshly tilled soil. Plowing is a form of pest management but it's not mandatory, just orthodox. Aeration happens naturally from insects - less so if some human has dumped insecticide everywhere of course.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 19 2017, @05:28PM (5 children)
The ones that don't need plowing aren't the GMO crops (well, some of them are), but rather the perennials. Those you don't want to plow, at least not deeply enough to damage their roots. For a "sort of" exception, orchards are often plowed...just very shallowly. This is to control weeds. or to allow other annual plants to be planted within the orchard.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 19 2017, @07:45PM (4 children)
You'll be surprised how small a number of annual crops actually need plowing - see no till farming [wikipedia.org] for a starter, explore further if interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:31AM (3 children)
This is a bit of a wild tangent, but while reading your post it suddenly occurred to me that one of the oldest and longest-term ways of enriching farmland, mixing in biochar, is radically underutilized today. Which seems odd to me, considering the amount of waste that you get from many crops - all those stalks and corncobs could be converted to char and plowed back into the soil, rapidly enriching it.
At some point you'd no doubt reach "peak biochar" and want to stop before causing problems, but then your fields would be greatly enriched for the next several decades/centuries.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:47AM (1 child)
They'll be even more effective in enriching the soil if you just ground or cut them, even better if you mix them with mushroom micellia before use.
Charring will bring down the energy stored in chemical bonds - less energy for soil biome to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday May 20 2017, @04:26PM
Not really actually, at least not in the long term. Dig in the plant matter and they break down and get reabsorbed very quickly. Dig in charcoal and you enrich the soil for a very long time - centuries to millenia. It's not a matter of energy, or traditional fertilizing. The charcoal doesn't get reabsorbed, it jest sits there, pretty much inert, altering the soil chemistry/ecology for centuries. I don't remember the exact mechanism, or even if it's well understood at all.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Saturday May 20 2017, @02:35AM
Most of those stalks and corncobs become animal feed and winter bedding; they're not wasted. And fields are commonly grazed between harvest and snow, leaving lots of manure in its wake.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday May 19 2017, @06:22AM (1 child)
RTF(s)A one concludes that it's possibly a new steel alloy, or possibly just the use of said allow for plows which is new. And maybe the plow design is better than either the imported ones or the allegedly crappy home-made ones. But it's definitely cheaper than the imported ones.
I can only hope a lot was lost in translation. At least getting the alloy composition would've been nice. As is, one can make no informed comparisons.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday May 19 2017, @04:21PM
I think your right, it sounds like an evolution of current design.
It also features:
The edge of the plow has a better ground-breaking angle and has helped reduce abrasion and fuel consumption
Which can be read for both a literal and figurative interpretation of ground breaking!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Friday May 19 2017, @06:51AM (15 children)
Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Ah, Runaway! Soon you will be able to accurately specify the population of China! But that is not the important thing. The Chinese invented agriculture, out of whole cloth! They were growing rice and millet when your ancestors were scraping slime mold off of Mastadon bones, you frigging hillbilly! And of course, you should be aware of the plot of Ayn Rand, well known communist sympathizer and blue steel aficiando, who predicted this in her novel, um, crap, I never read any Ayn Rand, in order to preserve my sanity, so I don't know which novel it is, but she did not write that many, and they were all almost equally bad, so it is the one with the steel in it, though as I vaguely recall, it was for rail?
Moldboard, or "turn-over" plows, were a major techical innovation in the West, quite some time ago. So is there not something about Muslims, and plowing sand? And how the former head of the National Security Council was a fucking shill for both Russia and Turkey, and Southern Arkansas, all at the same time, undercuts the significance of this submission, since it makes no difference, unless you are growing barley. John, John Barleycorn.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @07:34AM (7 children)
Truly, Runaway is an idiot, an ignoramous, a bot mon, a singularity amoungst the constellation of Arkansawians, someone so dense, that the Earth is in danger of being sucked into a Black Hole. I prefer not to read anything he posts, since what ever he post is the most pure and reflned bullshit designed to support the Republican cause! He may claim to be an independent, but that is only because he read the word on the box: "Depends". Sounds like "independent", does it not?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @07:48AM (6 children)
Truly, Runaway is an idiot, an ignoramous,
Let's be fair about this whole thing about how ignorant Runaway1956 is. He is profoundly ignorant. He is "American Educational System" ignorant! He cannot distinguish Tashkent from Khotan! Shit, we are lucky if he can tell the difference between Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon! Runaway is so ignorant, he cannot tell the difference between cross-dressers and cross-gender! He cannot tell the difference between patriotism and supporting an illegal military operation of which he was a willing and complicit part. Runaway is a war-criminal, and he is too ignorant to know it. He also is a very stupid farmer. Submitting an article like this, playing upon the lack of knowledge of the Urban Elites? Oh, my dear Runaway, you misunderestimate yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @10:42AM (2 children)
Is there any difference? Really?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @02:27PM (1 child)
Subtract one from the other, that will give you the difference...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 19 2017, @05:23PM
I'm sorry, but nowadays subtractions are legally restricted to benefits, additions to profits, multiplications to scandals, and divisions to people.
The root of the problem being the failure to integrate cities, we cannot subtract them.
(Score: 1) by charon on Friday May 19 2017, @07:29PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @03:09AM (1 child)
No mod, no mod-bomb. Rather simple, really. Now posting and submitting with a pattern designed to destroy SoylentNews? That's fine, bro!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @03:12AM
Hmm, also seems that AC is only at the whim of the editors? So, like, Anonymous Coward is not anonymous? Hmmm. Still cowardly, no doubt. Probably just Chelsea getting back at the Runawaytard.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @08:36AM (2 children)
Runaway is the Last Soylentil. After everyone else has left, realizing there is no point in talking to him and Ethanol_funded, Runaway will still be here, because he cannot be stopped, he will continue to post, even though he has been proven wrong on each and every point he makes, even though no one besides Donald agrees with him, and even though he is being surrounded by anchor babies of his own lineage. . . Runaway will abide. Soon, there will be a SoylentNews with only one member, and that member will try to Runaway, but it will not be able to. The sound of its own idiocy will call it back, like Lorelei calling herself back again to the post. We await you wisdom, Runaway, we who are you. For there are no others left.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @09:06AM (1 child)
I just like to watch, as the complaints roll in, and Runaway's supply of down-mods runs out. Yes, he is still a net-negative for SoylentNews, and he may even pretend to have a posse, but every time the down mods cease about the time any one user's supply would be exhausted. So it is just Runaway. Poor, poor, poor Runaway, left talking to himself, again. But, you know what they say!~
(Score: 3, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday May 19 2017, @03:22PM
Runaway isn't the only person with mod points.
When I was little, sometimes my grandpa would let me ride in his tractor with him. I have an interest in this topic, although I have about the same level of knowledge about farming as quantum mechanics. Don't fool yourself that farming isn't a complicated and technical profession.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @02:03PM (1 child)
You're just jealous because you Greeks didn't invent agriculture. But, you did plow a lot of little butt-cheeks! The rest of the world calls that thing a penis, you call it a mouldy-board? Whatever . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:35AM
It is amazing, in a sort of "Deliverance" kind of way, how any criticism of Runaway results in a AC going on and on about "sqealling like a pig!" and how Runaway thinks someone "sure has a purty mouth". As if sex, or sexual orientation, had anything to do with the issue at hand. But I guess, with Runaway, it is always about sex. Pevert.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:55AM (1 child)
犁不起作用.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:30AM
白左!
(Score: 1) by TrentDavey on Friday May 19 2017, @02:13PM
So can we buy one, reverse engineer it, outsource it to Taiwan and sell it back to the Chinese?
Kind of a novel idea I thought.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @02:48PM
Plow xiānshēng
That's the name
That name again is
Plow xiānshēng
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @09:51PM
Delete copper. Fast loading juck.