Innovative spark
Organic farmers convert old tractors to run on electric power
APPLEGATE, Ore. – At Blue Fox Farm, the tractor is old but the fuel is new.
Like a small but growing number of organic farmers around the country, Chris Jagger has converted an old Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor built in the 1940s to run on electricity at his farm in southwest Oregon.
They like the small tractor’s nimble ways around row crops. And with an electric motor instead of a gasoline engine bolted on the back, it runs cleanly, quietly and slowly with no belches of exhaust, few breakdowns and no direct consumption of fossil fuel.
Jagger still plugs into the grid back at the barn, but some farmers are setting up photovoltaic panels in the fields or on the tractors to draw power from the same source that grows their vegetables: the rays of the sun.
“As long as I’m alive, I am probably always going to be dependent on petroleum myself,” said Jagger. “But I think it’s important to be always making a step in the direction of looking for alternatives.”
The founding father of the idea, organic farmer Ron Khosla in New Paltz, N.Y., is embarrassed to admit that when he built his first one in the winter of 2001-2002, he was not interested in saving the Earth so much as finding a less smelly and more reliable alternative to his Model G’s balky gasoline engine.
He said the torque curves are flatter than with gas or diesel engines, and it was easy to double the power. Plus, the machines can be driven extremely slowly.
“We have two of them now, and they’re terrific,” he added. “Absolutely no trouble with the motors. I have had connections to the batteries loosen up and cause sparking, but that’s just because I’m an idiot, and you tighten a bolt and you’re back in business.”
Khosla has no idea how many electric Gs are out there, because he quit counting after he got to 100. Farmers can buy conversion kits on the Web from various producers.
Between the tractor and the conversion, Khosla figures a farmer can put one together for about $3,000, though the growing demand for Model Gs is driving up the price.
With old Model Gs becoming harder to find, Khosla has been working on something completely different, designed from the ground up around an electric motor. He wants it to do everything the Model G will do, and be simple enough that a farmer in the developing world can weld a frame together, then mount an electric motor onto it. He has built three prototypes and figures it will be ready to go after two more.
“People are like, ‘Yes! Sign me up! That’s great, because I can’t find a G anywhere,’ ” he said. “We’re mostly there.”