A wholly unnecessary study of chewy fruit candy, articulated four-wheel-drive tractors, and the fifty million acres of Alberta dirt that quietly connect them.
01The Premise
Three things sit in the cab of a working Alberta tractor at 11pm during seeding: a thermos of coffee gone cold, a phone showing a radar loop, and a crumpled sleeve of Starburst in the door pocket. Nobody planned that. It just happens, on farm after farm, from Grande Prairie to Foremost.
So this page takes the joke seriously. Candy is stored chemical energy. Diesel is stored chemical energy. Alberta is 50 million acres of land where somebody converts one kind of energy into bread. The units are ridiculous but the arithmetic is honest.
The thesis: a tractor and a Starburst are the same machine at different scales — both take a compressed packet of sunlight and spend it doing work on the prairie. One just has better cup holders.
02Alberta, By The Numbers
Round figures, prairie-honest. Alberta is Canada’s second-biggest farm province by area and it is not close to being small.
~50M
acres of farmland
~41,000
census farms
~1,200
avg. acres per farm
~6.5M
acres of canola
~7M
acres of wheat
~4.5M
head of cattle
100–120
frost-free days
~350mm
growing-season rain
The short version: a short season, not much water, enormous fields, and equipment big enough to make the season fit. That last constraint is why the tractors got the way they got.
03The Steel
A century of Alberta horsepower. Bars are scaled to 700 hp.
Fordson F
1917 · ~20 hp
20 hp
The tractor that ended the horse. Steel wheels, no cab, and a starting procedure that occasionally broke an arm.
John Deere Model A
1934 · ~42 hp
42 hp
Two cylinders, a sound like a slow heartbeat. Half the shelterbelts in Alberta were planted behind one.
Versatile 800
1970s · ~215 hp
215 hp
Prairie-built articulated four-wheel-drive. The moment a single operator could farm a whole section in a day.
Modern 4WD Articulated
2020s · ~620 hp
620 hp
RTK autosteer to 2 cm, a leather seat, and a display telling you the seed rate three rows back. The operator’s real job is watching for rocks.
In 1917 one person with a Fordson could work maybe 10 acres in a long day. Today one person with a 620 hp tractor and a 70-foot air drill can seed 400. Same daylight. Same dirt. 40× the reach.
04The Candy→Diesel Converter
The centrepiece of this entirely serious research programme. How much Starburst would it take to seed your field, if candy were diesel?
—
litres of diesel
—
Starburst pieces (equal energy)
—
candy mass
—
2-packs, end to end
—
chewing time, one human
—
the verdict
Method: diesel = 38.6 MJ/L (9,225 kcal/L). One Starburst = 20 kcal, 4.5 g, 2.2 cm long.
Fuel-use rates are typical prairie field averages per acre and vary wildly with soil, depth, and how much your neighbour is watching.
This compares energy content only. A diesel engine converts about 40% of that to work; a human converts about 20%, and would be dead long before finishing. No thermodynamic dignity is claimed.
05Flavour Tier List
Tap to vote. Stored in your browser only — nothing leaves this page, which is more than most websites can say.
Pink is correct. This is not a debate; it is a finding. — reset my votes
06One Alberta Season
The whole year compressed into the six weeks that actually matter, twice.
LATE APRIL
Frost comes out of the ground
Everyone stares at the same soil-temperature app. 5°C at seeding depth is the starting gun.
MAY
Seeding — the long weeks
18-hour days. Canola, wheat, barley, peas. The Starburst sleeve appears in the door pocket around day four.
JUNE
Spray, and pray for rain
Roughly 350 mm of growing-season precipitation decides the year. Two dry weeks in June cost more than any decision you make.
JULY
Canola bloom
Central Alberta turns a yellow visible from orbit. Also hail season — a ten-minute storm can erase the whole thing.
AUGUST–SEPT
Harvest
Combines run past midnight because the dew shuts you down and a September snow is genuinely possible.
OCTOBER
Fall work, then quiet
Fertilizer, harrowing, hauling grain. Then the shop light stays on all winter fixing what broke in May.
07Candy vs. Machine
Property
One Starburst
One 620 hp Tractor
Mass
4.5 g
~22,000 kg
Energy stored
20 kcal
~11,000,000 kcal (1,200 L tank)
Power output
negligible
462 kW
Unwrapping time
1.4 s
14 months lead time
Cost
~$0.06
~$750,000
Ratio (energy per dollar)
333 kcal/$
14.7 kcal/$
Acres seeded per unit
0.0009
400 / day
On an energy-per-dollar basis, candy wins by 22×. On an acres-per-day basis, the tractor wins by every number that has ever existed. This is the entire argument for capital equipment, expressed in confectionery.