Ag Tech Sunday - Tractor v Horse, Pros and Cons.....Haha

By: "Farm Tender" News
Ag Company News
Aug 17, 2019
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This article is bought to you by Chandler Agribusiness and Mobble.

By John Gladigau - Executive Director at Bulla Burra Operations Pty Ltd

This is how we would be thinking of new innovations today.

I came across this article on the merits of Tractors vs Horses in the Journal of Agriculture of SA from 1940 which made fascinating reading. I have included a few direct quotes from this article in this post, some of which could be argued still have relevance today.

A few quotes from an article questioning the value of tractors vs horses from the Agricultural Journal of SA, 1940

1. "Australian farmers should be sufficiently well informed in order to resist the astute, and at times unscrupulous, talk of the tractor salesman. He must think for himself, not do what his neighbour is doing just because he is saving time that economically may not be worth saving."

2. "I do consider tractors are here to stay, but I do not infer that every farmer should possess a tractor. In fact, nothing could be more disastrous."

3. "The unfortunate thing about tractors is that they do not breed. Also, like horses, they have a limited life."

4. "Whether the useful life of a tractor is 5, 7 or even 10 years - you can rest assured that there will be no young tractors running in the paddock to take their place."

5. "Tractors remain a liability while ever they fail to reduce the cost of production. Tractors from overseas are employing someone else's labour and making hay growing for horses a less essential occupation."

6. "Repair bills with tractors may in time outbid any costs involved with veterinary treatment and therapeutics with horses.

7. "Tractor companies for the most part are failing lamentably in their duty to give service and assistance after they have sold the tractor."

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8. "We have yet to prove farming to be permanent farming without livestock. One might even ask, has a farmer ever farmed in the strictest sense of the word if he can be off his farm for regular intervals?"

9. "The horse has many indisputable virtues and has an undeniable place in our future farming economy. It is still man's noblest servant, willing and anxious to do in the future what it has done for us in the past."

10. "I am very concerned with some of the so-called advantages of tractors. They enable the farmer to do his work in the least possible time and he has more time at his disposal. For what? To increase his cropping, buy more land and crop, and crop, and crop it? Or is it just a desire to be free at weekends, and free for days and even weeks on end, and become a suitcase farmer?"

11. It is the man that has a get-rich-quick glint in his eye and a roving disposition at weekends and between seeding and harvest that we have to be careful about. Such a farmer is a menace to Australia, and if such men are allowed to monopolise the wheat growing of Australia then you can rest assured that they will sell our wheat lands to overseas consumers of bread, and pay the tractor companies and oil firms of other countries for the privilege.

How much of this still rings true?

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