Agriculture has, so far, been dated back at least 23,000 years, but it is only in the last 200 years or so that the method by which it is fuelled, has come under scrutiny.
When it was that animals were first used to supplement the efforts of human muscle is not known precisely, but there is evidence of ox being used as draught animals 5,500 years ago, although that was for ceremonial occasions, rather than in the field.
Throughout the several thousand years that animals were the predominant source of power, it was taken as granted that the fuel, in the way of grass or other fodder, would be grown locally, a practice which could consume around a third of the crops produced by the 19th century.
This was the situation until the arrival of steam ploughing in the mid-19th century, which got off to a shaky start with the Royal Agricultural Society of England taking four years to decide that John Fowler’s method drawing a plough across a field between two steam engines was “able to turn over the soil in an efficient manner at a saving compared with horse labour; while in all cases it is left in a far more desirable condition and better adapted for all the purposes of husbandry”.
Steam on the land
At the peak of steam ploughing, over 20ac a day could be cultivated with a ton of coal – a task which would take a pair of horses three weeks, so the savings were significant.
To what extent steam displaced labour, or whether labour was drawn to industry creating a shortage in rural areas, is a complex argument, but it is likely that the present debate on farmers facing staff shortages has been rehearsed many time before.
What is clear though, is that steam power would generally rely on energy that was brought on to the farm from an external source, usually in the form of coal.
This is a highly significant turning point in the development of agriculture, and one that is often overlooked today.
However, it did not escape the attention of Henry Ford or Harry Ferguson, both of whom saw the horse as a terrific drain on the resources of a farm.
These two gentlemen were adamant that the tractor was the path to greater productivity and efficiency, and was the key to greater prosperity in doing so.
They were right, although what they failed to advertise, was the fact that cheaper production would result in a fall of commodity prices and so no great long-term increase in profit margins would result.
Yet what was established, was the fact that buying in energy, in the form of oil, released land for food crop production and so enabled more mouths to be fed at a lower cost.
Steam in the yard
Even before the Ford-Ferguson duo had popularised the concept, there had already been marked advances in power being brought to farming through the use of stationary and portable engines, both steam and internal combustion.
These engines would have been used to power pumps, mills, threshing machines and so on, with the crop being brought to the engine, rather than the engine going to the crop, as is the case with a combine harvester.
As already noted, coal was a major source of energy, but other materials could well be used to heat boilers, such as wood, straw, peat and any other organic material that was dry enough to burn.
An engine for all alternative fuels
The manufacturers of steam engines would often offer variations of the firebox-boiler combination to accommodate these alternative fuels, especially as many of the engines were sent to the outposts of the various European empires that existed at the time.
These outposts would have little coal available, but there would be plenty of coconut husks, sugar cane stalks and so on, which made excellent fuels and so the steam engine was adapted to burn them.
Likewise, when combustion moved into the cylinder with the advent of the hot bulb engine it was the ability of these motors to run on a variety of liquids, in an era where there was no regular supply of a standard fuel, that made them so popular.
The greater thermal efficiency of internal combustion was also a big step forward, and this from a motor that would run on anything from kerosene to creosote.
These two feature features were highly desirable traits before products distilled from mineral oil became widely available.
The present debate over alternative fuels can be seen as being as old as mechanised farming itself, although it is now driven by the question of whether the use of mineral oils is desirable or not.
Future alternative fuels
What history does show us, is that alternatives have been used right from the start of mechanisation – it is not a new concept by any means, and through the use of surplus organic materials little, if any, new carbon need be released from the ground to power modern tractors.
Today, we have the introduction of hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) as a direct drop in replacement for diesels.
All engine manufacturers are happy to see it used in its products and it is now accepted as a genuine alternative to mineral based diesel fuel.
Tractor manufacturers are quick to tell us that they are are exploring all options and the new Core engines from AGCO are designed from the outset to be adaptable to various fuels, not just diesel.
New Holland has gone one stage further and is developing a method of recovering energy from organic material on the farm and presenting it to the engine in the from of methane in its Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) tractors
This neatly overcomes Henry and Harry’s objections to a third of a farm’s land being used to power the horse. #
By capturing the energy contained in methane, that would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere, farmers can have their cake and eat it, or so it would appear, but that has been said before.