Thoughts from the Tractor Seat: From Horse Teams to Satellites, Agriculture’s Century of Change
By Ken Polehn
The Dalles, Ore., Sept. 6, 2025 — Not that long ago—within the lifetime of folks still living in Wasco and Sherman Counties—the farm fields echoed with the steady clop of draft horses. Harness jingled at dawn, sweat darkened their hides by noon, and at day’s end, the team pulled the wagon home. It was the rhythm of farm life.
By 1949, the last steady horse teams had all but disappeared from our wheat fields and orchards. The machine shed replaced the horse barn, and tractors became the new power in the field. In less than one generation, an entire way of farming—an entire way of life—vanished.
Think about that. In under a hundred years, agriculture leapt from reins in the hand to steering wheels… and now to GPS auto-steering guided by satellites circling thousands of miles overhead. From the launch of Sputnik in 1957 to today’s tractors that can drive themselves with sub-inch precision, farming has lived through one of the fastest technological revolutions in human history.
Some people call farmers “backwards.” I say the opposite is true. Agriculture has often been the proving ground for new technology.
Rubber tires had to survive farm fields before they showed up on the highway.
Hydraulics were perfected on tractors long before they became common in construction.
Diesel engines were tested under load, pulling plows, long before they powered semis.
GPS auto-guidance, now standard in cars, first became practical when farmers started using it to plant straight rows and reduce overlap.
Farmers didn’t just adopt technology—they helped perfect it before the rest of the world caught on.
Our grandparents plowed behind teams. Our parents broke new ground with steel and diesel. Today, we steer with satellites, computers, and auto-guidance systems that would have looked like science fiction only a generation ago.
That’s why I push back when people say agriculture is slow or behind the times. The truth is, the farm has often been one of the first places new ideas take root. We may work with soil, water, and living plants, but we’ve always been willing to harness the best tools available.
Less than a century separates the horse-drawn cultivator from the self-driving tractor. That kind of change makes me wonder—what will the next fifty years look like? Robotics? Artificial intelligence? Drones tending individual trees or vines? Maybe all of the above.
In fact, some of it is already here. Artificial intelligence isn’t just a future concept—it’s at work today. Packing houses now use AI-powered cameras and sensors to sort fruit faster and more accurately than the human eye, grading for color, size, and even tiny blemishes invisible to most people. What once took teams of workers on a packing line is now being done with incredible speed and precision by machines that are, in a sense, learning how to see.
One thing is certain: farmers won’t be “backwards.” If history teaches us anything, it’s that agriculture is always a step ahead, plowing the way for progress.
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