Farmers across America ditch tractors for oxen in bid to beat rising fuel prices
Last updated at 10:49 PM on 9th May 2011
- Wisconsin-based traditional farming school teaches 20 farmers every weekend from all over country
When farmers Danielle and Matt Boerson realised they could no longer afford to run their tractors, they took the bull by the horns – and ditched them for oxen.
Soaring petrol prices had become so high that the couple, who run an 80-acre farm near Madison, Wisconsin, were forced to get rid of their two tractors, hay baler, plough and rotavator.
So they took a course at the agricultural institute in traditional farming techniques.
Cheap: A pair of plough-ready oxen cost $3,000 (£1,800) – roughly the same as a second hand tractor
‘It gave me the confidence that, yes, I could do this’, Danielle told the Times. ‘It just required a lot of concentration and a firm voice.’
Their instructor was former peace core volunteer Dick Roosenberg, 64, who learned the trade while working for the UN in West Africa.
He took the skills he had honed back to Michigan and set up Tillers International.