Ploughing and hauling with draught animals

In 1910 more than twenty-four million horses and mules worked American farms, three or four to a farm, and they ate more than a fifth of the food those farms grew. The tractor took the pulling, and with it the harness work, the stabling, the shoeing and the acreage kept in oats and hay to feed the team. What did not transfer is the ploughman's read of the ground, which now sets a hydraulic depth control rather than a rein, and the upkeep of the machine, which became a trade of its own. Animal traction is still the working answer on terraces, in paddy fields, in a few vineyards where soil compaction has a real cost, and on most smallholdings in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.