By Salient Partners. Originally published at ValueWalk.
There is no animal more important in the ascendancy of Western Civilization than the horse, and no invention more important than the horse collar. It has nothing to do with warfare, and everything to do with farming and transportation.
Horses can work 50% faster than oxen, and they can go all day, particularly the draft horses of Northern Europe. But if you put an ox harness on a horse, the horse will choke to death. Very different bone structures, particularly with the shoulders.
When the horse collar was introduced into Europe in the 10th century (invented by the Chinese, of course, just like everything else of note prior to the Industrial Revolution) agricultural productivity skyrocketed. The resulting food surpluses led to a population boom, labor specialization and diversification, and the development of a merchant class. The horse collar (plus the horse shoe and the heavy plow) sparked a productivity revolution that totally reshaped European civilization and the history of the world.
A farm should have a foreman, a foreman’s wife, ten laborers, one ox driver, one donkey driver, one man in charge of the willow grove, one swineherd, in all sixteen persons; two oxen, two donkeys for wagon work, one donkey for the mill work.
Cato the Elder (234 – 149 BC), Roman senator, farming aficianado. Also Carthago delenda est.
I get about the same amount of work done with my John Deere 4610 as Cato accomplished with his sixteen people and five animals, particularly when I’ve got a 460 loader up front and a shovel mounted in back.
The parable of the man who has fled from an elephant
This is the story of a man who, in fear of an enraged elephant, has escaped into a pit, into which he has let himself down, hanging down and holding on to two branches at its edge. He looks down and there is a dragon, its mouth open, waiting for him to fall so that it can devour him. Then he raises his eyes to the two branches and sees two rats at their root, a black one and a white one, that are gnawing at the two branches untiringly and without flagging.
While considering his situation and worrying about his fate, he notices near him a beehive containing honey. He tastes the honey, and its sweetness preoccupies him and the delight of it distracts him from thinking about his plight, or from seeking a means to escape. Thus he remains diverted, unaware, preoccupied with that sweetness, until he falls into the mouth of the dragon and perishes.
Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa, from “Kalilah wa-Dimnah” (c. 750).
An Iranian who wrote in Arabic, Ibn al-Muqaffa had a knack for telling Persian fables with a political bent. He was killed for that, of course.
In 1917, Pierre Cartier bought the townhouse at 653 Fifth Avenue in exchange for his most valuable two-strand pearl necklace, valued at $1 million. Today, you can get a two-strand pearl necklace of similar length and pearl size from Macy’s for about $2,000. As for what 653 Fifth Avenue is worth today … well, it’s a lot more than $1 million.
Some of my happiest hours are spent on a tractor. The John Deere 4610 engine has 42.8 horsepower, which means that it generates the raw energy to lift 23,540 pounds one foot into the air in one second. That’s 32 kilowatts for people who think of energy in those terms. The tractor uses this raw energy to power both a drivetrain with enormous torque and a top speed of 30+ miles per hour, as well as a hydraulic system to which you can attach loaders and shovels and the like. It’s a beast, and the ability to control a beast like this is an absolute rush. My girls get this rush by riding and controlling an actual horse. I get it through a tractor that aggregates 43 horses into one hunk of metal.
The tractor isn’t just a powerful beast, but — like an actual horse — is also an incredibly versatile beast. It makes me a one-man wrecking crew if that’s what needs doing around the farm (and occasionally when it doesn’t need doing … I’ve inflicted my share of unintentional damage over the years). But my favorite and best use of the tractor is to Repair and to Make. Need to grade the quarter-mile driveway? Tractor. Need to carry the lumber and lift the roof to build the mustang’s run-in? Tractor. Need to shovel out the boot-sucking ankle-deep “mud” from the sheep and goat pen? Tractor. Need to brush hog a field and clear some trash trees to keep it healthy? Tractor. I am productive with my tractor to a degree and in a manner that I had no idea was even possible in my pre-farm life.
I’ve got two tractor-as-metaphor points I want to cover in this Note From the Field, one on investing and one on macroeconomics.
The investing metaphor is a simple one — a tractor leverages my personal strength a hundred-fold (assuming that I could lift 235.4 pounds one foot into the air in one second, which sounds about right for my maximum ability … on a good day … once … followed by a week in traction). I can accomplish amazing things with that untiring, never flagging, hundred-fold leverage. I can also kill myself.
In 2015, more than 400 people died in farm accidents in the U.S., and tractors accounted for about half of those fatalities. Interestingly, tractors only accounted for 5-10% of non-fatal farm accidents. When you screw up with a tractor, the consequences are deadly.
The source of a tractor accident (or in my case, thankfully, near accidents) is always one of two things: overconfidence or distraction. The machines themselves are phenomenally robust and well-engineered, which means that it’s never equipment error that gets you into trouble. It’s driver error.
Not coincidentally, the most careful, measured people I’ve ever met are professionals who drive big pieces of powerful machinery. There’s no bravado with these guys, no “sure, I guess you can stand on that, why not?”, no “yeah, be right with you, just wanna check my Twitter feed real quick.” It’s always measure twice, cut once, and if there’s anything that’s out of place or out of sight … the answer is no. They are, without exception, the antithesis of Donald Trump (in behavior I mean, not politics), which I suppose is a third tractor-as-metaphor story, given that the White House is the biggest piece of powerful machinery on Earth.
I’ve tried to bring this same sense of non-bravado professionalism to my farming activities, particularly whenever I’m around the tractor. I have to admit that it’s a work in progress, particularly on the overconfidence side. After all, I grew up in Alabama, where invitations like, “Hey, come on over, we’ve got a box of fireworks and a shotgun, so we’re gonna blow stuff up!” were not unknown. But there’s nothing like a slight feeling of “tippiness” while you’re sitting in that tractor chair with 2,000 pounds of gravel in the loader that you’re carrying juuuust a bit too high on a sideways slope that’s juuuust a bit too steep to refocus the mind into a more appropriate frame.
Read the rest here:
Sign up for ValueWalk's free newsletter here.
