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more at http://quickfound.net/links/agriculture_news_and_links.html "Sings the praises of rural electrification. Story of a farm family whose work and play are transformed when their place is hooked up to the grid." NEW VERSION with improved video & sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyu0T51zAXI Farming playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL897E774CDB19F283 Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage. In areas facing labor shortages, this allows for greater productivity at reduced cost. One famous program was the New Deal's Rural Electrification Administration in the United States, which pioneered many of the schemes still practiced in other countries. According to IEA (2009) worldwide 1.456 billion people (18% of the world's population) do not have access to electricity, of which 83% live in rural areas. In 1990 around 40 percent (2.2 billion) of the world's people still lacked power. Much of this increase over the past quarter century has been in India, facilitated by mass migration to slums in powered metropolitan areas. India was only 43% electrified in 1990 as opposed to about 75% in 2012. In 1979 37% of China's rural population lacked access to electricity entirely. Some 23% of people in East Java, Indonesia, a core region, also lack electricity, as surveyed in 2013. In Sub-Saharan Africa less than 10% of the rural population has access to electricity. Worldwide rural electrification progresses only slowly. The IEA estimates that, if current trends do not change, the number of people without electricity will rise to 1.2 billion by the year 2030. Due to high population growth, the number of people without electricity is expected to rise in Sub-Saharan Africa... United States In 1892, Guy Beardslee, the original owner of Beardslee Castle, was paid $40,000 to provide hydroelectric power to East Creek in New York. Despite widespread electricity in cities, by the 1920s electricity was not delivered by power companies to rural areas because of the general belief that the infrastructure costs would not be recouped. In sparsely-populated farmland, there were far fewer houses per mile of installed electric lines. A Minnesota state committee was organized to carry out a study of the costs and benefits of rural electrification. The University of Minnesota Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, working jointly with Northern States Power Company (NSP, now Xcel Energy), conducted an experiment, providing electricity to nine farms in the Red Wing area. Electricity was first delivered on December 24, 1923. The "Red Wing Project" was successful- the power company and the University concluded that rural electrification was economically feasible. The results of the report were influential in the National government's decision to support rural electrification. Before 1936, a small but growing number of farms installed small wind-electric plants. These generally used a 40V DC generator to charge batteries in the barn or the basement of the farmhouse. This was enough to provide lighting, washing machines and some limited well-pumping or refrigeration... Of the 6.3 million farms in the United States in January 1925, only 205,000 were receiving centralized electric services. The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was created by executive order as an independent federal bureau in 1935, authorized by the United States Congress in the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, and later in 1939, reorganized as a division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. It was charged with administering loan programs for electrification and telephone service in rural areas. Between 1935 and 1939 – or the first 4½ years after REA's establishment, the number of farms using electric services more than doubled. The REA undertook to provide farms with inexpensive electric lighting and power. To implement those goals the administration made long-term, self-liquidating loans to state and local governments, to farmers' cooperatives, and to nonprofit organizations; no loans were made directly to consumers. In 1949 the REA was authorized to make loans for telephone improvements...