Crop establishment has been a challenge over the past few months and with the difficult conditions, has come a new appreciation of the plough, as farmers fall back on this well-proven implement to get crops planted.
The debate as to whether it actually has a future or not, has taken a back seat this year, as the weather has demonstrated that it would be foolish to consign it to the museum.
Yet, delving into the history of engine powered ploughing reveals that many of the problems we associate it with today were recognised over 150 years ago, and brings into question as to just how far we have advanced.
In the beginning
David Greig is not a name immediately associated with the advancement of agriculture, but this Scottish engineer played a pivotal role in bringing powered ploughing to the land.
His thoughts upon the advantages of doing so, are as relevant today as they were back in the 19th century.
Born near Stonehaven in 1827, Greig’s talent was spotted by the father of cable ploughing, John Fowler, and spent the rest of his life working for his company, including a stint in Egypt alongside Max Eyeth, a German engineer and fellow employee.
The American civil war had shifted cotton production to the Middle East in the early 1860s and the two gentlemen were earnestly selling Fowler’s early steam ploughs to growers in the country, as they rapidly expanded production of the crop.
This early trade went a long way to establishing Fowler as the leading manufacturer of steam ploughing engines. At the time of of Greig’s death in 1891, the company employed around 1,600 at its factory at Leeds.
Yet, Greig was more than a salesman, along with Eyth, he was a natural engineer and the pair held several patents relating to the operation of cable ploughing, as well as improving the steam engines themselves.
Max Eyth himself gained greater recognition later, as went as he on to establish the hugely influential German Agricultural Society, or DLG, which, amongst its other activities, organises the biannual Agritechica show.
Explaining the plough to science
Greig stayed with John Fowler & Co and later became a partner in the business, during which period he assiduously promoted steam ploughing by cable, including an address to the British Association, now the British Science Association, in which he noted:
“The steam engine stands on the headland and hauls the implement to and fro by means of a wire rope.
“All treading and compression of the soil and sub-soil associated with horse cultivation is thereby entirely avoided and the implement is driven at a much more rapid pace, throwing up the soil to a greater depth and in a loose state enabling it to derive full benefit from the influences of the atmosphere.
In horse ploughing the case is just the reverse, for the sole of the plough and the treading of the animals so consolidates the bottom that the necessary chemical action between soil and sub-soil, and consequently all escape of gas and water is prevented.“
In these few lines, he encapsulates the very problems that we associate with ploughing today, and we are no nearer eradicating.
Purely from a practical point of view, we might appear to have gone backwards by drawing the plough behind a tractor, rather than cable, for this compacts the soil just as a horse did, although with several furrows being formed at one time the area driven over is reduced.
Grieg went on to mention another issue that has been coming to the fore over the last couple of years, “The person who farms by steam has a powerful and untiring force at this disposal such that he can afford to wait until his land is in an exact state for working.”
Timeliness is a frequent argument used by manufacturers looking to sell bigger machines, yet it has hardly applied this sowing season as the ground was rarely fit to work with tractor of any size.
Overcoming compaction
It also might be added that the Fowler steam engine sets were expensive and most definitely contractors tools, the equivalent of a high horsepower forage harvester today, ensuring that timeliness was also a function of availability.
Cable ploughing was superseded by the tractor during WW2, but it had definite advantages that would be of value in wet seasons like this.
One factor against it was that it took at least five men to operate the two engines and plough, but now, with autonomy and GPS, it might well just take the one operator and any compaction will remain on the headlands, just as Fowler and Greig intended.