Tractor Wars: New book highlights transition from horsepower to power farming

MOLINE, Ill. — The origin of the farm tractor and the transition from horsepower to power farming is the focus of a new book, “Tractor Wars: John Deere, Henry Ford, International Harvester, and the Birth of Modern Agriculture.”

“The story is told through the lens of these three companies,” said Neil Dahlstrom, author of the book and manager of archives and history at John Deere.

“The early tractor story is not what people think it is,” said Dahlstrom about the book that is now available wherever books are sold.

“My book is based on a lot of information most people have never seen before that comes out of corporate archives,” said Dahlstrom, who has worked for John Deere for the past 20 years. “It is full of surprises and people that are new or who are reintroduced to people.”

Dahlstrom’s idea to write the book started when the company celebrated the 100th anniversary of the John Deere tractor, which debuted in 1918.

“We started doing research for that in 2016 and I kept picking up things along the way that weren’t relevant to what we were doing that I found interesting,” he recalled. “So, I stashed those away.”

During the early 20th century, Henry Ford was quite interested in farm tractors.

“The book is built around Ford’s announcement that he was going to build a farm tractor in 1908 and then his first exit from the tractor business in 1928,” Dahlstrom said. “All these other people try to build tractors and try to figure out how to deal with Henry Ford who doesn’t have any tractors to sell.”

Henry Ford and John Deere had a relationship and the two companies worked together, Dahlstrom said.

“That’s where I spent the first couple of years, learning about Ford and what became his Fordson tractors,” Dahlstrom said. “I kept running into dead ends, and when I run into dead ends that makes me curious, so I kept following leads.”

Dahlstrom spent about five years researching and writing “Tractor Wars.”

“It was probably three years of research before I thought to myself maybe I would turn this into a book of some sort,” he said.

Some people are surprised that the John Deere company was almost 70 years old when the first John Deere tractor was made.

“That’s one of the things that drew me to this story — how to introduce an entirely new machine that’s unfamiliar to most people and then market and support it,” Dahlstrom said.

“Then throw someone like Henry Ford into the mix, who’s got seemingly limitless financial resources and his objectives and approach were entirely different than a company like John Deere or the market leader at the time, International Harvester,” he said. “It really got my curiosity going about how an industry goes from five or six manufacturers to over 100, eight years later.”

Henry Ford’s lifelong dream was to build a farm tractor, Dahlstrom said.

“He first saw a steam engine on wheels when he was 12 years old, it captivated him and it was something he kept going back to,” he said. “Ford’s ambitions, motivations and his approach to business were really fascinating.”

John Deere, Ford and International Harvester had three unique approaches, Dahlstrom said.

“Their business models and what they are hoping to accomplish — they all approached it in an entirely different ways,” Dahlstrom said.

“Ford was really impressed with John Deere plows, so Deere engineers started to go visit Ford and his engineers to start the development of a two-bottom plow specifically for the Fordson tractor,” he said. “The two companies were seen together so often that at one point in 1919 there was speculation that Ford was going to buy John Deere.”

There was a lot of overlap between farm equipment manufacturers and automobile manufacturers during this time.

“By the mid-1920s, Ford had almost 75% market share of the tractor business, but it wasn’t profitable,” Dahlstrom said. “That’s where the story gets interesting because you have short-term versus long-term views of the world and these three companies have different perspectives.”

Context is important, Dahlstrom said, to tell the story of “Tractor Wars.”

“You can’t talk about the tractor business without talking about the automobile business,” he said. “And you can’t talk about this era without talking about World War I. There are so many other drivers that impact people and decision-making because none of this is done in a vacuum.”

Dahlstrom’s goal of “Tractor Wars” is to write a story-driven book.

“I want people to learn about the ups and downs and the people that were involved,” he said. “There are a lot of myths that I hope are debunked. There are a lot of urban legends around equipment including why a product line was canceled or why a certain product was named.”

The author is looking forward to discussions that develop with readers of “Tractor Wars.”

“I see a book as the foundation that sparks a conversation,” he said. “I look forward to talking and meeting with people to get their perspective.”

To order a copy of the book, go to www.neildahlstrom.com.