Going over old ground

Forget modern tractors and minimum tillage - there is something glorious about the sight of farmer, horse and vintage plough in perfect harmony

- Marcus Armytage

THE INTOXICATING scent of freshly turned soil, diesel fumes and burgers, alternately overpowering each other as they waft on the breeze, can mean only one thing: competition ploughing. Ploughing is a skill, and the modern 12-furrow reversible ploughs pulled by a satnav-guided caterpillar-style tractor capable of turning over as many as 80 acres a day can be traced back more than 4,000 years.

In about 2000BC, during the shift from hunter-gatherer to farmer, Homo sapiens came up with a basic hand-held hoe, often only a tree branch used to scratch away at the ground and break the surface to produce a basic tilth in which to plant agricultural crops. As the brains of the operation, once man had worked out how to produce iron and work it into a shape that, when pulled through the soil, turned sods over, it did not take him long to realise that he could get someone else to supply the brawn.

So it was developed into something pulled by an ox (or, depending where in the world, sometimes by camels, elephants or, worst-case scenario, the womenfolk). Then, to increase the acreage capable of being ploughed in a day, horses were introduced and, although the Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century brought in new tools, new crops and new agricultural methods, ploughing largely remained unchanged as teams of horses tipped away ploughing two to three acres a day.

The biggest driver in modernising ploughing methods, however, was the need to feed a growing population. Over the past 100 years, the horse has been replaced by a different horsepower. During the First World War, horses were already competing with the steam engine but the arrival and then mass production of the farmer's mechanical horse, the tractor, was the game changer.