Working Horse Population
A Working Horse Population is an agent population of working horses.
- Context:
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Mass Underemployment.
References
2008
- (Heleski et al., 2008) ⇒ Camie Heleski, Karen Waite, and Richard Reynnells, editors. (2008). “[http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/FTAAProceedings/unwantedhorseproceedings2008.pdf Proceedings of the The Unwanted Horse Issue: What Now? Forum."
2007
- (Kilby, 2007) ⇒ Emily R. Kilby. (2007). “The Demographics of the U.S. Equine Population.” In: The State of the Animals IV: 2007. Ed. Deborah J. Salem and Andrew N. Rowan. Washington: Humane Society Press, 2007. 175-205.
In this demographic examination of America’s equine population, the numbers clearly show upward trends in all things equestrian over the past fifty years. Will that trajectory continue, adding year after year to the cur - rent ten million population, or will loss of open spaces turn the tide as it limits horse housing and riding room? Will ownership patterns under go fundamental changes when population density, land costs, and escalating environmental controls eliminate the “backyard”-keeping concept and make suburban boarding stables untenable? Will horse production expenses rise in the face of land pressures to the point that equestrian involvement, now a highly egalitarian pursuit in this country, truly becomes a rich person’s game? Horse people started fretting over these sorts of questions not long after horses stopped being beasts of burden in this country and became mostly recreational partners and companions. So far, the equine species has flourished in its nonutilitarian role, but there’s no end run around the fact that horses are and always will be large animals in a shrinking natural world.
- How Many U.S. Horses Are There?
This most basic question of demographic research is yet to be answered with satisfactory accuracy for the U.S. equine population. Horses and other equidae are no longer sufficiently critical to national well-being to warrant the close government oversight afforded food-producing animals, nor are they so much a part of the average American experience as to inspire close scrutiny of their numbers and condition. Instead, available demographic data for horses and their kin have arisen from special interests or within restricted populations, resulting in seemingly conflicting figures.
1900 21,531,635 1905 22,077,000 1910 24,042,882 1915 26,493,000 1920 25,199,552 1925 22,081,520 1930 18,885,856 1935 16,676,000 1940 13,931,531 1945 11,629,000 1950 7,604,000 1955 4,309,000 1960 3,089,000 Source: Adapted from Ensminger (1969).
1983
- (Leontief, 1983) ⇒ Wassily Leontief. (1983). “Technological Advance, Economic Growth, and the Distribution of Income.” In: Propulation and Development Review, 9(3). doi:10.2307/1973315
- QUOTE: ... the process by which the introduction of tractors and other machinery first reduced and then completely eliminated horses and other draft animals in agriculture. The competitive price mechanism played a decisive role in this process. Even if horses were ready to accept smaller rations of oats or hay per working day, the process of their gradual elimination would slow down only temporarily; more and more efficient tractors would come along, and finally, unable to compete with superior performance of machines, horses would lose their jobs. The outcome would, moreover, be brought about by the perfect operation of the free competitive price system that would automatically compare the cost of different technologies competing with each other. If horses had controlled the government, this would have been a quite different story. But this brings us back to the problem of human technological unemployment and income distribution.
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- Wassily Leontief.
- QUOTE: ... The human worker will go the way of the horse ...
1969
- (Ensminger, 1969) ⇒ E. M. Ensminger. (1969). “Horses and horsemanship." Interstate Printers and Publishers, Inc.