Food & agriculture · 1892

Gasoline tractor

John Froelich's petrol tractor started the replacement of draft animals on farms.

Froelich built a working gasoline tractor in Iowa in 1892; Henry Ford's cheap Fordson of 1917 made tractors mass-market. Freeing land once used for horse feed, tractors released roughly a quarter of US cropland for human food.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Internal combustion engine 1876
Steel plough 1837

What it led to 1

Precision agriculture 1996

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Cereal yield Latest: 4.21 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data

Cereal yields in England/UK since 1275 Latest: Wheat: 7.28 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data

Fossil fuel consumption Latest: 144k TWh (2025) Source: Our World in Data