U.S. farmers fear power cuts

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33479, 9 March 1974, Page 12

U.S. farmers fear power cuts

(By

JOHN N. HUTCHISON)

California is the biggest agricultural state in the United States and its farmers, critically dependent upon energy, are nervous.

The state produced $NZ5,333 million in agricultural products in 1973. It produces all the nation’s output of a few crops, and 50 per cent or more of many of them.

Agriculture consumes five per cent of the state’s energy. That seems like a small proportion of the total energy consumption, but if that percentage diminishes, this greatest food-producing area in the world will have trouble playing its vital role, according to an official of the California Farm Bureau. A study made by national and state officials shows that more than half of the energy used by Californian agriculture is in the form of natural gas, with motor fuel and electric power providing most of the rest.

Natural gas dries fruit and stock feed, in direct use at the farm, but it is also vital to the production of fertiliser — especially nitrogen. Fifteen per cent of the total energy supply goes to fertiliser production. Irrigation pumps take 13 per cent of the total. Feed manufacturing takes a big slice; so does transport and farm machinery. Gerald Geiger, a vice-pres-ident of the California Farm Bureau and a rancher himself, described the energy crunch in dairyman’s terms when he was asked for an opinion on electricity needs: “Cows are creatures of habit,” he said. “They start producing milk without outside stimulation. They have a limited holding capacity. The cows, by habit, line up at the door to the milking parlour and have their own built-in devices for waking the fanner.” If a power shortage stops the alarm clock, the cow will still wake up the farmer, but he is still in serious trouble without electricity, he noted: “Cows must be washed and prepared for milking. That requires heated water and pumping. Cows are normally introduced into milk-ing-sheds with hydraulicallycontrolled stalls, where they are cleaned, fed mechanically, and automatically provided with drinking water, and milked. Interruption of power’ to any of these processes suspends the milking and will lock in or lock out animals.”

National energy control officials have promised that agriculture throughout the United States will have the highest priority for its energy needs, but there are many apprehensive farmers like Mr Geiger who are watching the whole energy chain, from the production of tractors and ammonium sulphate to the bawling cow, trapped in her stall by a gate that won’t open until the current comes back on.