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Very interesting to see the UK and France yields in the lead. I’m surprised. I wonder what Russia and Ukraine yields are.

Ukraine is the best in the world, but it also has an ideal climate and soil.

Ken,

Are you claiming that single parent households somehow lead to prosperity or something?

You keep asserting that plain Anabaptist practices would mire people in poverty and misery. Yet that hasn’t been the experience anywhere - most notably, Mennonites in what is now Ukraine settled unsettled territory and built farms from scratch. They were able to both feed themselves and have plenty left over to sell.

Josh wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:29 pm Ken,

Are you claiming that single parent households somehow lead to prosperity or something?

You keep asserting that plain Anabaptist practices would mire people in poverty and misery. Yet that hasn’t been the experience anywhere - most notably, Mennonites in what is now Ukraine settled unsettled territory and built farms from scratch. They were able to both feed themselves and have plenty left over to sell.

I am claiming that we live in a complex modern world and that prosperity is not solely about stable nuclear families or education. It isn't one thing. It is the combination of a lot of things. So yes, stable families help. But they aren't what brought on the tremendous increases in productivity resulting from technology that defines the modern world. That was the industrial revolution in the 19th century and the scientific revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

If the entire world chose to disregard education and end schooling at 8th grade (ages 13-14) and had done so for the past several centuries. So no schooling past middle school, no high schools or universities. As you say is the conservative Anabaptist life. Then we would still be living in a world medieval agrarian world without any modern technologies or advancements, all of which come from science.

Conservative Anabaptist agrarian farmers today are more prosperous than their distant forefathers because the rest of the world has advanced. And they have access to modern crop hybrids, modern fertilizers, modern transportation systems to take their crops to market, and so forth. The world we live in is wealthy today because of the gains in productivity brought on by science and technology, not because of nuclear families. Afghanistan has lots of nuclear families and little divorce yet is incredibly poor because it is still largely a medieval society, especially in the rural areas.

Ken wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 5:11 pmI am claiming that we live in a complex modern world and that prosperity is not solely about stable nuclear families or education. It isn't one thing. It is the combination of a lot of things. So yes, stable families help. But they aren't what brought on the tremendous increases in productivity resulting from technology that defines the modern world. That was the industrial revolution in the 19th century and the scientific revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

If the entire world chose to disregard education and end schooling at 8th grade (ages 13-14) and had done so for the past several centuries. So no schooling past middle school, no high schools or universities. As you say is the conservative Anabaptist life. Then we would still be living in a world medieval agrarian world without any modern technologies or advancements, all of which come from science.

It's a symbiotic relationship, one could argue. What gives a portion of society the leisure to pursue higher education and technological and scientific inquiry and advancement is the segment of society that provides them the basics of life at a reasonable cost. The doctors and scientists and lawyers need food and housing and other things that the working class, of which conservative Anabaptists are a small part, provide for them, in part by utilizing technological advances and services that are provided to them by college-educated professionals, but also in part by labor and skills that really can't be learned by advanced education. The various sectors of society seem to need each other to a large extent.

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:13 pm Very interesting to see the UK and France yields in the lead. I’m surprised. I wonder what Russia and Ukraine yields are.

I noticed that as well. I wonder what variables led to that yield in the UK and France? It may dip this year as the farmers are protesting.

MaxPC wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 5:44 pm

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:13 pm Very interesting to see the UK and France yields in the lead. I’m surprised. I wonder what Russia and Ukraine yields are.

I noticed that as well. I wonder what variables led to that yield in the UK and France? It may dip this year as the farmers are protesting.

My suspicion is that the best ground is used in the USA for higher value crops such as corn. And the lower value wheat is grown on lower quality ground and climates.

And while this generally will hold true to other countries farmers, the USA has just so much more wheat being grown on vast dryland, that the average national yield per acre is negatively impacted.

The UK and France doesn’t have the vast acres of dryland wheat like we do. So the small amount of wheat that they do produce, is not being grown on dryland.

I think the US could easily get as high of wheat yields as the UK and France, if we left out the dryland production. All this to say that I do not that these two countries have better average yields due to their better seed or methods or even soil, but instead is due to them growing a small dab of wheat on good ground - ground that we could match, but grow other things on instead.

Last year Arizona had the highest wheat yield per acre, at 6,180 pounds. They aren’t known for being a wheat powerhouse, (ranking 33rd) and as a state didn’t produce all that much.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/190 ... %20bushels.

Afghanistan has lots of nuclear families and little divorce yet is incredibly poor because it is still largely a medieval society, especially in the rural areas.

And yet drove out the world’s greatest military power.

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 5:51 pm

MaxPC wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 5:44 pm

RZehr wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:13 pm Very interesting to see the UK and France yields in the lead. I’m surprised. I wonder what Russia and Ukraine yields are.

I noticed that as well. I wonder what variables led to that yield in the UK and France? It may dip this year as the farmers are protesting.

My suspicion is that the best ground is used in the USA for higher value crops such as corn. And the lower value wheat is grown on lower quality ground and climates.

And while this generally will hold true to other countries farmers, the USA has just so much more wheat being grown on vast dryland, that the average national yield per acre is negatively impacted.

The UK and France doesn’t have the vast acres of dryland wheat like we do. So the small amount of wheat that they do produce, is not being grown on dryland.

I think the US could easily get as high of wheat yields as the UK and France, if we left out the dryland production. All this to say that I do not that these two countries have better average yields due to their better seed or methods or even soil, but instead is due to them growing a small dab of wheat on good ground - ground that we could match, but grow other things on instead.

Last year Arizona had the highest wheat yield per acre, at 6,180 pounds. They aren’t known for being a wheat powerhouse, (ranking 33rd) and as a state didn’t produce all that much.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/190 ... %20bushels.

I think you are right, your perspective makes sense. I wonder if the dry land wheat is used primarily for stock feed?

No, it’s primary for human consumption. Export.