(Phred) wrote in
:

In article , Ayrshire
wrote:
"fb" wrote in :

For the "translation" of an agricultural program from
Dutch/English to American I am looking for units used by
American farmers.

- How do they measure length / width of a field (in yards or
feet)? - How do they measure the area (size)? In acre with
decimals? - How do they measure Yield?
- How do they measure applied products (in fluid/dry ounces per
acre)?

Are there any other US units that are different from the metric
(SI) units?

Please reply to

Area of a farm or fields is expressed in acres such as my place:
9.4 acres with 7.4 tillable (arable) acres. Some areas aof the US,
the Midwest & Great Plains, we might talk about a section of land,
which is 640 acres, or multiple sections. Depending on the product
applied, the measurement may be gallons, pounds, tons, or ounces
per acre. Manure usually is gallon or tons per acre, fertilizer
will usually be pounds and herbicides or insecticides in ounces or
pounds per acre.

But be aware that the Yankee gallon is smaller than the Pommie
one.

See http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/230/235/appxc/appxc.htm
"General Tables of Units of Measurement"

In particular this section:
quoting
The present British gallon and bushel--known as the "Imperial
gallon" and "Imperial bushel" are, respectively, about 20 percent
and 3 percent larger than the United States gallon and bushel. The
Imperial gallon is defined as the volume of 10 avoirdupois pounds
of water under specified conditions, and the Imperial bushel is
defined as 8 Imperial gallons. Also, the subdivision of the
Imperial gallon as presented in the table of British apothecaries
fluid measure differs in two important respects from the
corresponding United States subdivision, in that the Imperial
gallon is divided into 160 fluid ounces (whereas the United States
gallon is divided into 128 fluid ounces), and a "fluid scruple" is
included.
/quoting

Note: nist http://nist.gov/ is the US National Institute of
Standards and Technology and has a lot of stuff that might be
useful to frans. I suggest using Google (Advanced Search) to
search the site by using the restriction Domain/Only/nist.gov in
the search criteria.


Cheers, Phred.


Phred reminded me of yields. These are expressed as bushels per acre
for grains, oilseeds and maize. Forages are expressed as tons of dry
matter or tons of material per acre. For instance corn ,maize, silage
is uually expressed as 25 tons per acres and then one would ask what
the moisture % was to calculate dry matter yield. I believe cotton,
tobacco & peanut yields are expressed as pounds per acre, but you
should verify that.