[History of Agriculture] Tractor Wars

"Tractor Wars" by Neil Dahlstrom: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953295746/

Software is Feeding the World (Rhishi's newsletter): https://www.rhishipethe.com/sftw

[History of Agriculture] Cyrus McCormick And The Birth Of Mechanical Harvesting

 It's impossible to picture the modern food system we have today without the invention of the tractor. And it happened really not that long ago, just over a hundred years ago.

Today we're gonna be talking about this book, "Tractor Wars" by Neil Dahlstrom. Neil is the manager of archives and history at John Deere and tackling this book with me is my good friend and repeat host on the podcast, Rhishi Pethe.

An excerpt from the epilogue of "Tractor Wars: John Deere, Henry Ford, International Harvester and the Birth of Modern Agriculture":

" Fortune magazine called the 1920s the decade of the Fordson. Not everyone agreed, but the fact that the Fordson accelerated adoption of the farm tractor and forever altered the competitive landscape is undeniable. Ford was right about the insatiable appetite for automobiles and in time for farm tractors. There were now 17 million passenger cars and nearly two and a half million trucks traveling on more than 521,000 miles of surfaced roads. But he had miscalculated the connection between farmers and their land and their constantly evolving needs. Most importantly, farmers wanted to fortify that relationship, not end it. Only 33 American farm tractor manufacturers remained in 1929 as mergers, consolidations and bankruptcies continued to narrow the field. In its overview of the tractor industry in early 1928 the Tractor Field book surmised that large numbers of inefficient machines were discarded during the five-year period from 1920 to 1924. As many were built by companies whose efforts were largely experimental."

So it's that process of like explosion in consolidation that we're gonna be talking about here today from Neil Dahlstrom's book.