TITANS AND TRACTORS AT WAR

About Neil

https://neildahlstrom.com/

Neil Dahlstrom is an archivist, writer, and speaker. He grew up and lives in the Quad Cities, once known as the farm implement capital of the world. Today the Quad Cities is a vibrant community of cities on the Illinois and Iowa sides of the Mississippi River with an exciting history of innovation in the farm equipment and automobile industries.

Neil works at Fortune 100 company John Deere, as the archivist and historian. He is a member of the Kitchen Cabinet, the Food and Agriculture Advisory Board at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and Visit Quad Cities.

Neil’s research and speeches have taken him to historical societies and museums, abandoned factories-turned-coffee shops, and state-of-the-art research centers across the country.

Tractor Wars: John Deere, Henry Ford, International Harvester and the Birth of Modern Agriculture is the untold story of the farm tractor. Underappreciated and overlooked, the emergence of the farm tractor and the birth of modern agriculture is not what you think. The race to introduce the farm tractor to the farmer was as bitter and hard fought as the race between Ford, Dodge, and General Motors. And Henry Ford, whose lifelong dream was to build a tractor, was at the center. Automobiles were luxuries. But the tractor and the power farming revolution it ushered in would revolutionize the world in a different way, allowing a shrinking farm population to feed a growing world. 

From the boardroom to the courtroom, from the draft table to the factory and the farm, the introduction of the tractor is an innovation story as essential as man’s landing on the moon or the advent of the Internet. Against the backdrop of a world war and economic depression, Tractor Wars is the unknown story of industry stalwarts and disruptors, inventors and administrators racing to invent modern agriculture. Before John Deere, Ford, and International Harvester became icons of American business, they were competitors in a forgotten war for the farm. 

“Mr. Dahlstrom…has written a superb history of the tractor and this long-forgotten period of capitalism in U.S. agriculture. We now know the whole story of when farming, business and the free-market economy diverged, divided and conquered.”

-Michael Taube, Wall Street Journal

“Neil Dahlstrom’s Tractor Wars engagingly tells the story of one of the great business battles of the twentieth century. Anyone interested in business, agriculture, or tractor history will enjoy this great tale, well-told.”

Gary Hoover, Executive Director, American Business History Center

Before John Deere, Ford, and International Harvester became icons of American business, they were competitors in a forgotten battle for the farm. By the turn of the twentieth century, four million people had left rural America and moved to cities, leaving the nation’s farms shorthanded for the work of plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and threshing. That’s why the introduction of the tractor is an innovation story as essential as man’s landing on the moon.

This is a second episode featuring Mr. Dahlstrom. The earlier episode was a discussion of John Deere the individual.

NEIL SHARED THIS KIND REMARK
Thank you for having me again. I truly enjoy talking with you

PATRICK MINER

save.these.stories @gmail.com


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