08 Aug 2005
Did the Draft Horse Fail?

“Before winding up this very abbreviated report on a business that was the life-blood of American Agriculture for so many years, let’s reflect on the broader aspects of what the draft horse could mean to the farmer of today.

Come with me down the country roads of the farm belt on a day 50 years ago. The fields on either side are growing an assortment of crops, with quite a lot in pasture. The substantial farm homes with big barns, good outbuildings and adequate fences (making salvaging of crop residues by livestock relatively easy), dot the 80’s and the 160’s. Big, drafty horses and mules are working in the fields, sometimes in big hitches and many just in teams. Mares with colts at their sides attest to the fact that an adequate supply of farm power is in the making. Depending on the time of year, we’ll see a six horse hitch of Percherons, some grey and some black, plowing with a gang plow; a pair of Belgian mares on a spreader with colts running alongside; a nice team of Clydes mowing hay; a team of bay geldings hooked on a stationary hay baler pulling it to a new location in the field, four head on a binder, all going about the business of planting, cultivating, and harvesting a crop. Or rather, a variety of crops.

Now let’s take this same trip today. The fields are still there, but most of them much bigger. Most of the fences have been torn out in some areas, many of the barns and outbuildings have been torn down and others are falling down, homes that echoed to the laughter of children and the wisdom of age stand silent and empty, instead of a variety of crops with a healthy mixture of grasses and legumes the earth seems to be black for miles, all under the plow, and of course, there are no horses. And there is also a distinct shortage of people, as reflected in the run down appearance of many small towns that no longer (the experts say) have a right to live. The wheat and corn don’t grow any faster, and the hay doesn’t cure any faster. The machine that replaced the horse didn’t raise the price of farm products. The machine that replaced the horse didn’t increase the fertility of the soil. The machine that replaced the horse does not reproduce itself. But, the machine that replaced the horse has replaced millions of Americans on the land, crowding them into our urban centers. The power of the farm vote and the farmer’s voice has been diminished, and cheap food is regarded as a birth right. Not cheap automobiles, or cheap tractors, or cheap boats, just cheap food. The farmer has had to be subsidized by the rest of the populace to continue to operate so that he can produce foodstuffs at an acceptable level, that is lower and lower. Farming tenancy leading to land ownership, has become a social relic, and has instead become a hereditary privilege for fewer and fewer young men and is now called agri-business.

Is this a success story? Did the draft horse fail as an efficient source of farm power?”

by Howard Johnstone, Centennial Farm Belgians, Maple Hill, Kansas

from The Draft Horse Journal, Spring, 1975

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