It's Time To Kill Bushels Of Corn

[reedivan]

It is all in what you get used to, including metric understanding. For pressure, 200 kPa is about 29 PSI and 250 kPa is about 36 PSI. For corn yield, it was said, 150 bu/A corn is about 9.4 tonnes per hectare and 160 bu./A corn is about 10.0 tonnes/hect. But 9 tonne/ha is about 133.8 bu./acre and 10 tonne/ha is about 148.7 bu./acre. Nothing in round metric is hard if we were used to it.

Why we still use bushel as a volume, is beyond me. At least we now buy seed corn by the seed unit instead of by bushel, which simplifies planting rate calculations. Why do we measure our grain sold in dry bushel volumes and then convert it to weight pounds? For every commodity, you have to know its odd number of pounds per bushel. Why at least can we just sell it by ton weight?

Here are some metric numbers: a tonne is 1000 kilogram; 10000 square meters is a hectare; 1000 liters is a cubic meter; a liter of water weighs 1 kilogram. So how many cubic inches is a bushel, or how many square feet is a acre, or how many cubic feet is a gallon, or how many pounds does a gallon of water weigh? Since 19 of 20 in the world uses the metric system, maybe it would take less time to quit complaining about metric than the time spent to just learn and get used to it. It is so much easier, simpler, and you make fewer mistakes, all of which adds up to saving money.

[gurly3801539]

Just curious, why do you assume less mistakes made?

[sw363535]

So Jim sees us building walls.  

That is good to hear.  

 it is a similar comparison....................  Walling off the commodity trade and the border by refusing to use the metric system.

Like the drug trade ......... export sales should skyrocket as we try to limit traffic.... and keep college students and press from understanding volumes.

Perhaps we could legalize the metrics system in a few well chosen counties and create safe havens for those foreigners who scale the walls and find the sandwich and soda handed to them on their pursuit of legal protection under someone elses law.  It is a long journey but the free cash for filing taxes and free tuition is well worth it on their way to understanding bushels.

[sw363535]

Not sure how Jim feels about it, but that was a very interesting read on just another  sick and worthless marketing day.

I'm doing cash flows and break evens ......... this thread was fantastic in comparison.....  🙂

[reedivan]

Why fewer mistakes and saving money? When something is easier and simpler, rather than harder and more complex, than that is the very definition of saving time and mistakes. There is one unit of metric length -- the meter, which by using prefixes allows scaling by simply moving a decimal point. The liter and the hectare stray a little from the meter prefix, but by a long history they are here to stay, at least they are powers of 10 to a meter. Compare the meter to the rat's nest of all the English units and conversion factors for length, area, and volume that we have. Metric uses only decimal and never fractions. Mixed unit compound measures are much harder than simple decimal arithmetic. So what is half of 3 feet and 3 and 3/8 inches? Or maybe multiply it by pi and determine the answer to the nearest 1/16 inch? So what is 12 feet divided by 5 to the nearest 1/16 inch? I suppose that I should be glad we don't use Roman numerals or pound/shilling/pence for money.

If you scale all your units to millimeter only when doing carpentry or whatever, then all your units will be integers, never mixed compound units and fractions.

NOTE: I may have made a mistake when I listed 10 tonne/ha is about 148.7 bu./acre. My conversion website that I used may be for 60 lb/bushel wheat instead of 56 lb/bushel corn. If we used kilograms and hectare, then maybe I would have no error? I give up on this thread.

[erikjohnson61y]

I think I could get used to metric tons (tonnes) per hectare, but it's going to feel weird asking people "Who owns that 64.7499" instead of "Who owns that quarter?"

Our kids grandkids might ask "Grandpa, why are section roads 1609 and a third meters apart? Why aren't they a kilometer apart?"

Even in all-metric Canada, portages are still measured in rods!

[JimMeade]

I'd imagine a quarter section will still be called a quarter section informally, just not in the legal documents.

In Germany, one can still hear people order ein pfund (a pound) of meat, knowing it's approximately 1/2 kilogram.  People refer to some quantities as ein viertal (a quarter) or ein drittle (a third) informally.  For some things, it doesn't make much difference.  But, as generations pass, the standard description is used more and more.  If we went metric it would probably be scores of years before people totally forgot archaic units of measure.  You'd have to remember the Gettysburg Address to know what a score was.  🙂

[sw363535]

With the world growing smaller by the tweet, I think there are some things that will be held onto with an iron fist ...... to preserve identity and heritage.

Like my wifes italian Christmas cookies.  They will be our heritage in the new .com world.  a "quarter pounder", a 6" sub, and a ten inch pumpkin pie.  Europe has had very little to offer for the last 200 years.  Only things consistantly measured in meters around the world are bullets.

I see no sense in going backwards.  If the world can use the US Dollar for consistant trade they can do the conversions or stop living in the past.  I am not buying a 3.44 cm sub.  If europe can't do the conversions Subway will.  Thats our Subway, McDonalds, and 70 more of the worlds top 100 restaurants by location and revenue.

Europe can't even hold itself together for more than 50 years at a time without fighting over the desire to redraw it's own borders in one location or another.... The euro itself is still struggling to find legitimacy.  And without the US funding and creation from the origin, The UN or NATO wouldn't even exist.

Why do we continue to want to go back there culturally.  Truth is we don't........ Only the baby boomer "hate america first" crowd lives that dream.  Those who actually read a history book don't.