Green Business

[TRADITIONAL LOGGERS]

How sustainable do we all think the wood business is and where can improvements be made that increase income without damage to the place we like to work in?

 

The reason is everyone these times seems to claim a "Green" business.

[Highland Forestry]

For as long as there has been woodland, there has been Woodsmen..

 

Surely this will continue?

[MJPollitt]

i know that there could be a growing market for the production of bio char... most my ideas would work on the small scale. don't know about big companies?

[MJPollitt]

I'd love to work on horse logging also... know of any way i could get into this?

[BobG]

I'd love to work on horse logging also... know of any way i could get into this?

 

I love heavy horses but diesel power is much more eco friendly!

[Daniël Bos]

I love heavy horses but diesel power is much more eco friendly!

 

Now there's a statement I'd like to see backup up with some evidence!

[BobG]

Now there's a statement I'd like to see backup up with some evidence!

 

It's a no brainer I'm afraid. Just consider the following-

 

Let's assume that a heavy horse can sustain 1 HP for 8 hours, 5 days a week i.e. 40 hours work per week. 1 HP is roughly 750w so a horse does 30KWh worth of work per week. A 60HP diesel tractor is typically 40% efficient i.e. it extracts about 3.6KWh of energy from every litre of diesel used. The tractor will therefore need less than 9 litres of diesel per week to better the work rate of the horse. The emissions from the tractor are a lot less harmfull than those of a horse too. When you factor in the life cycle of a tractor from iron ore to completed tractor versus the life cycle of a horse from stable to grave things get even bleaker for the horse.

 

To keep things fair and balanced here's a link to some flawed reasoning as to why horses are more eco friendly.

 

Economics of Farming with Horses

Edited December 6, 2011 by BobG

[NI Tree]

you have fogoten one important thing the energy to manufacture a machine is huge. a horse runs purelly on solar power in the form of biomas, so can be said to be carbon neutral and some of it,s emistions are useful, and alot less toxic as there is no benzene exctra. when it also comes to the end of there life of a machine you are left with a lot of harzords waste but a with an aminal they decompose nateral contiouning to eco system as alowing worms exctra to brake them down.

Edited December 6, 2011 by NI Tree

[BobG]

you have fogoten one important thing the energy to manufacture a machine is huge. a horse runs purelly on solar power in the form of biomas, so can be said to be carbon neutral and some of it,s emistions are useful, and alot less toxic as there is no benzene exctra in them

 

As stated in my last paragraph, the life cycle of a tractor is less damaging than that of a horse. Consider the industy of the farrier, stable hand, vet, feed manufacture etc needed to sustain he horse. The tractor has an off button, the horse does not.

[NI Tree]

not true cost to keep a horse a year is probaly about at the most on avarage £600 all in feed vets shoes exctra. the feed to stain a horse is mininal and the fuel to produce it hard feed is less then for yours per kg as you cook yours and it probaly been half way around the country and not from the farm next door (there food has less food miles). while the rest of there food has no food miles,