Parsifal, the phosphate requirements of potato and wheat crops may be equal in terms of kilograms per hectare but as the potato produces 5-10 times the food calories per unit area the super-phosphate requirements are considerably less per mouth fed.
In word, rubbish. The amount of phosphates needed to produce a calorie of Potyato starch is the same as the amount needed to produce a calorie of of wheat starch. Somewhere I have a study by the CSIRO that deals with this very subject.
Moreover the yields per ha are not that different, though I concede you get more volume per ha under potato cropping than you do with wheat. If you use a proper measure, the tonnages per HA there is virtually no difference. In 2010 Australia harvested 11.5 ha of wheat for a yield of 33 million tonnes. Thts about 3.3 tonnes per ha. Peak yields in the best growing areas are about 8-10 tonnes per ha. In WWII the average yiled per Ha was around 3 tonnes per ha.
By comparison in potatoes, yields have skyrocketed. in 1936 the average yield per ha was 7.6 tonnes per ha. today with a heavy relaince on genetic engineering, the yieds are 35.6 tonnes per ha.
European yields for both potatoes and wheat are similar, but tyhe numbers of people needed per ha are grossly more than in Australia. Germany is competitive in potato growing, they were, and are hopelssly innefficient in grains production.
I am not making this up, phosphate shortages due to interruption of supplies from Nth Africa were a big cause of European famine.
Unformtuantelym, and as usual, you are making it up, most of it. Typical method is to mix a little truth with a lot of lies to achieve a certain outcome. The famines in Europe had very little to do with the shortsages of phospahate. It had a lot to do with Nazi mismanagement of the european economies, and the breakdown in the transport system
The idea that Central European Harvesting (which includes Grain) was based on hand harvesting or horse harvesting is greatly overstated.
Euro[ean grain harvesting efficiency is still about a tenth as efficient as the great grain growing countries like Canada, the US and Australia. Maybe its not due to lack of modernization, but its still very innefficient
Those that grew grain almost certainly had a tractor to pull harvesting machines. A large number of smaller family farms in marginal land eg the hilly very cold parts of Eastern Germany where the owners were Artisans/Trades people that worked at their trade in winter but the farm in summer may have relied on horses or even hitching up the cow. About 3 years ago I was at an agricultural fair at the German Czech border and saw a parade of vintage tractors from the era from both countries.
All very intersting. I dont need to go to shows and museums to tell you the local history of motorizTION. mY grandfather setteled on 400 acres as a soldier settler after WWI. He harvrested with horse and scythe until 1926 when a co-op bopught a tractor. We bought the first tractor for the family in 1936. by wwii the family holding was just under 1000 acres of wheat growing land. We had 7 tractorsd by then. During the war, most of the male staff were drafted, but the womens land army filed their shoes pretty well, and production almost doubled again in that six years. Trust me, Europe is a fraction as efficient as Australia at growing grains.
When the requisitioning of Horses for use by the German army was increased the shortfall in agricultural draft animals was made up by use of motorized tractors. The effect was an overall increase in fuel consumption as Albert Speer noted. There was certainly enough tractors around to have this effect.
Exlain then why German primary production fell during the war, to about half what it was at the begining of the war. germany relied on feding itself by starving the rest of Europe.
In the present era for fermented Alcohol fuels we have Brazil with its sugar, the US with its maize, the Australians with their grains while for biodiesel's we have Europeans with their rape seed and the Malaysians with their palm kernels.
Food production could be unnaffected if only the waste bi-products were used, like potato plants rather than the potatoes.
I also can not see that the waste product would be so large that it would provide an aqueduct source of fermentable materials and in any case such things are perhaps best turned into animal fodder.
Using the husk material can still be used for animal foder once the ethanol has been extracted.
Nevertheless the Germans did have a considerable capacity to produce bio-ethanal, which they used to fuel the V2 missile. Perhaps they had prepared this industrial scale process in mind for use in combustion engines.
Not in 1936, if Hitlers memo was folowed. Perhaps it wasnt, but he seems to have forbade it in 1936.
Henry Ford and his Model T were initially designed and ran on ethanol 1915-26. Changed to gasoline mostly because of supply issues. Ethanol used in a pure form is not optimal, but ethanol as a fuel additive, which was known in 1940, might be a possibility. if Germany can expand her fuel stocks by 20% in 1940, with a fuel that costs only 80% that of regular German synthetic fuel, why wouldnt you introduce a program like that...Answer, Because the Nazis were not driven by rational behaviour.