Historical tractor development

I recently watched a YouTube video that described the growth of the tractor industry from late 90’s till about 1950.  It was interesting to see who bought a tractor, how it was affordable, and sheds light on today’s industry.

The video began in the late 1800’s.  There had been coal fired steam engine tractors for a while but they were HUGE (I mean far larger than today’s tractors!), slow, and expensive.  Only farm operations that were gigantic bothered to own one of these.

I suppose the first modern—as in small enough to easily transit roads—came about as first diesel and then gasoline and then again diesel engines powered the machines.  The very first petroleum fueled tractors actually ran on kerosene, a very close substitute for diesel.  These were at first expensive novelties until much cheaper gasoline engines became available.  Fun fact, gasoline used to be considered a waste product of the petroleum industry and it was disposed of by burning, burial, or dumping into river, lake, ocean, etc. etc.  But when gasoline was adapted to fuel small, cheap engines, it was then sold as a commodity.  Nice trick—sell your poisonous, explosive, carcinogenic and highly flammable toxic waste!

At any rate, row-crop tractors appeared just as the American Frontier was closing.  These great land-rush was over, which is bad timing for industrial production.  These gasoline engine tractors were notoriously unreliable—they were unlikely to survive one year.  They did not even have dust filters for the engine!  By the time harvest was over, the machine was shot.

That sounds awful (it is), but those who owned a tractor were something like 4-5 times more productive than those without tractors, so they were worth the investment, even if they were extremely short lived.

Consequently, there was something of a revolution in the Midwest.  Although there was no new land to own, most of the acreage on a farm was either pasture, or more likely just unbroken soil.  Breaking ground by horse was so laborious that only a small amount could be done in a season, or for that matter, a lifetime!  Midwestern land began a long process where increasingly more soil was brought into cultivation each year.  This could not have been done by horse alone.

I will spare the comings and goings of various tractor manufacturers, almost all of which have either gone bankrupt or been bought out by larger companies.  The focus I was struck by was that with the advent of the tractor, there began an approximately 70 year span of time where soil entered production at an ever-increasing rate.

Animals still did the majority of farm traction work (plowing, etc.) until about 1950!  I had no idea that it took so long for a farm horse to become obsolete!  And as draft animals became obsolete, so too did their pastures and field plots dedicated to their feed.  In a sense, the American land rush did not end until sometime after 1950.

But, these were not good times for tractor manufacturers.  They face the same issues then as today—there is no more land left for settlement.  In the United States, farms got larger, making larger equipment more practical and efficient.  This meant far fewer individual tractors sold.  The market was diminishing from its own success.

Such is the case today that the real money-makers for tractor manufacturers are the huge tractors and not the old row-crop ones.  But there is another side poking its head out—small landowners who just need a small tractor.  Kubota was built on this very principle, and John Deere is all in.  And there are an assortment of other manufacturers with a stake as well.

Ultimately I found it interesting how long draft animals were dominant, that productivity increase alone meant that even a small farmer could afford to buy a brand new tractor every year with no trade-in, and this last fact—that unlike cars, which most people expect to need as a basic fact of life, tractor manufacturers could not count on an increasing population of drive future sales.  Tractor growth—until very recently—was driven by acquisition of new land, none of which is coming forth.


I get fascinated by turns of events like these—I mean I am a history teacher after all.


Eric

There is a book - "God Speed the Plow", perhaps? something like that - which has some interesting information on this line of inquiry.

The cable plowing rigs - Fowler was a well known brand - was a short lived sideline in this story which allowed very heavy steam engines to till smaller fields.  The "balance plows" used for this had a set of shares for each direction, and were steerable.  The nearest application of something like this I've seen in modern times is the use of winch tractors in steep slope viticulture operations.  The tractor can inch along the top of the vineyard from one row to the next (which run up-and-down the slope), then winch up the harvest.  As the old saw goes "vines love the hills".

The nearly ubiquitous (in Europe) two-wheeled tractors are a fascinating solution for small, mixed agriculture operations.  American brands such as Gravely, Bolens and Simplicity were pretty common, especially in the post WWII boom, with marketing targeted at "sundown farmers", but the real workhorses were and still are the European makes: Aebi, Holder, Pasquali, Ferrari, Carraro, Grillo and of course BCS.  And a bunch of others I can't remember at the moment.

I had a David Bradley two-wheeled walking tractor with several implements, but sold it to someone with small acreage, to which it was better suited.  More than once, I've kicked myself that I didn't hang on to it, but I'm sure they put it to better use than I would have done in these intervening years.  I do still have an Ariens Model B, in need of some love, with which I may eventually get around to doing something.

I've occasionally seen a BCS with a blown engine on FB Marketplace or CL.  Once, there was one with a "Chonda" (Chinese Honda replica) repower, quite reasonably priced.  But, I don't really need one at the moment.  Or maybe ever.  Even if I do acquire small ag acreage.  But, they are pretty slick.

I have kicked around using old gear drive Cub Cadet parts to cobble up a version of these walking tractors.  I think it would be possible, with some fabrication and machining, to make a reasonable facsimile of these European Lego system tractors, including driven axle trailers for firewood fetching and the like.  But, like a lot of my projects, this one is in the "not yet started" category!

All that being said, the Amish seem to do a lot better financially than most farmers who aren't doing "big ag".  So, for conventional - if antiquated - farming, meat power still seems to be very viable.  And, for a garden, even a big garden, the amount of mechanization actually needed, once established, seems to drop precipitously for someone of sound body.