A Brief History of Farm Equipment

We often forget how much farm equipment has changed in just the last few centuries. Tools that were in use for hundreds if not thousands of years are now largely obsolete. Machines allow farmers to do far more work in a day than they ever could before. At the same time, the tools that modern farm equipment like tractors, balers, and harvesters have replaced were themselves replacements for even more primitive pieces of equipment. If any of this interests you and you’d like to learn more about the history of farm equipment, check out this guide from Rivera’s Machinery, Inc. 

Early Years

Farming isn’t an easy job by any means, but it’s easy to forget just how much the introduction of modern technology has changed things. In the earliest days of human civilization all anyone had was basic hand tools like hows, plows, and sickles and human labor. While almost quaint by our standards, these hand tools helped make early farming more efficient. Many are still in use today. 

Animal Labor 

The next big advancement in farm equipment came in the form of animal domestication. Animals specifically bred for strength and endurance like draft horses and oxen could do more work in a day than a team of human laborers could do in a week. Of course, animal labor had its drawbacks as well. Draft animals were much stronger than human laborers, but even their endurance had limits, and they were vulnerable to aging and disease. On top of that, these animals often ate the very product they helped produce, cutting into the farmer’s bottom line. 

New Tools

As time went on, farm equipment became more and more advanced. People either invented new tools or adapted existing ones to better meet the agricultural challenges they faced. As tools grew more complex and technology advanced, mechanized agriculture eventually replaced animal labor. Machines never got tired, never got sick, and didn’t eat valuable crops. Today, almost all working farms use a tractor of some kind, along with many others piece of farm equipment. 

Shop farm equipment at Rivera’s Machinery, Inc. Visit us online or at our dealership in Donna, Texas. We’re proud to serve communities like Harlingen, McAllen, and San Benito, Texas. We also offer servicing and parts ordering.