Susan and I took a recent rare vacation, this time to Vietnam. It was a walking tour that took us into the countryside which I much enjoyed for its glimpse into traditional farming. One of the features that we noted was the use of water buffalo as draft animals, although we also got the sense that South East Asia is modernizing with fossil-fueled tractors, both 4 wheeled like ours and two wheeled walk-behinds.
Our suspicions were reinforced by an article in the Bangkok Post which we picked up courtesy of Bangkok Airways flying into and out of Vietnam. The story was about a recently established school in Thailand for training buffaloes to plough farm land. We've long forgotton draft horses; I guess they're hoping not to forget their water buffalo.
When I was in Thailand four years ago I spoke with a farmer who shared with me that they were using water buffalo instead of shared or borrowed tractors because gas was too expensive even back then. There is an organization to which I have donated that helps farmers buy beasts of burden. It was surprisingly little to buy a water buffalo.
More close to home, Honda has a Civic that runs on natural gas, which is easy for those of us that have PG&E at our homes. It is zero emissions so one can outsmug one's Prius-ownning neighbor. Plus it uses North American fuel. I'll be able to fuel quickly at stations that can be 100+ miles apart, but I can gas at home by hooking up my PG&E to a home fueling (gas compression) gizmo AND get to use the carpool lane. The 24/36 mpg is nowhere near European standards, but I am told PG&E per gallon is about half (for now) the cost of gasoline. It holds 8 gallons and the home fueling gizmo compresses/fills one gallon every two hours.
Posted by: Bill Zimmerman | June 11, 2008 at 05:34 AM