How the Seed Drill Changed Our Lives

Although invented by an Englishman, the seed drill was improved upon by resourceful Americans whom we can be proud of and grateful for.

"The Plough-Team," between 1840 and 1897, by Edward Woutermaertens. Public Domain

Modern lifestyles differ from bygone ones conspicuously in that we do not spend our waking hours trying to ensure there is enough to eat.

Just a little over a century ago, most Americans still worked on farms. Even through the Colonial period, agriculture was much like it had been since Roman times. Planting was so labor-intensive that households couldn’t produce crops beyond a basic level of subsistence without lots of help (whether of the paid or unpaid sort). Not only was the work strenuous, it was also inefficient. After plowing furrows in the field, planters would scatter handfuls of seed into them, trusting in probability that some would take root. Since the seeds were not perfectly lined up, the rows grew unevenly.

Jethro Tull changed all this in 1701. He is justly credited as the man who launched the agricultural revolution by inventing the seed drill. Less well known, though, are the stories of those who came after him—farmers who made small but important innovations to this device that revolutionized our way of life.

What Is a Seed Drill?

Portrait of Jethro Tull (1674–1741), 18th century, by unknown artist. Public Domain

Although an Englishman, Tull had a huge influence on the American population. In his youth, he studied the pipe organ, then turned to the law for his profession, and then abandoned law for farming. In his book, “Horse-Hoeing Husbandry” (1731), he wrote that he never imagined his early musical knowledge would give him the idea for “the first rudiments of a drill.”

Tull built a new type of device: After it dug shallow trenches, it would drop seeds into evenly spaced rows at regular intervals in the same way a soundboard lets air into organ pipes. His original design was meant to be pushed by hand and sowed only a single furrow. Later, more complex horse-drawn versions could accommodate up to three rows.

Because it was the first farming tool with moving parts, Tull’s invention was delicate and impractical to produce until manufacturing methods progressed in the 19th century. By this time, agricultural advances started shifting to the other side of the Atlantic.

America Takes the Field

Plate VI from "Horse-Hoeing Husbandry," 1762, by Jethro Tull. Internet Archive. Public Domain

In 1841, Samuel and Moses Pennock patented a drill for seven rows, one of several agricultural machines that was successful in their state of Pennsylvania. One customer wrote the pair to tell them that their drill “is the most complete labor-saving machine I ever saw,” and that it did the work of “twelve horses, and five good men.”

After this, a steady trickle of drill manufacturers began to appear that were specific to the needs of different regions and fields. For planting wheat between corn rows, for example, farmers would pull a one-horse drill with a round fender to avoid harming stalks. By the end of the 19th century, there were nearly 50 such competing companies.

Battling With Birds

The most memorable of these success stories involves the Van Brunt brothers. George and Daniel had a problem shared by farmers beyond Wisconsin: birds, specifically, passenger pigeons. Though now extinct, this species was annoyingly populous at this time. Nesting in the Great Lakes area, they terrorized northern fields, sweeping in by the millions to devour seeds as soon as they hit the ground.

Covering seeds was a separate task from sowing them. Various innovators had attempted solutions for different crops. Jethro Tull used a trailing bar to cover his sainfoin seeds. The Pennock brothers’ patent described their expectation that loose “earth, falling back into the furrow” opened by their drill would cover “all the seed which is deposited at the bottom.” Lingering alternatives to drilling, involving either using a whirling wheel to propel seeds or dropping them from an elongated box, did not use any covering methods. This was done afterward by manually “harrowing” the soil, which risked burying the seed too deeply. Too shallow a covering, on the other hand, exposed seeds to the forces of nature. Hence, the Van Brunt brothers’ pigeon problem.

One day in 1860, George carved an idea into a turnip and showed it to Daniel. This whittled purple vegetable, when built to scale, would dig trenches, drop in a measured amount of grain seeds, and cover them with a drag chain before the pigeons could dive-bomb the field.

Using the turnip as their model, the Van Brunt brothers got to work building seven of these “force-feed” seeders in their shop. After several years, the shop grew into a factory. Though George eventually left when his turnip dream transformed to number-crunching, Daniel grew the company into one of the most lucrative drill manufacturers in the country. In 1911, John Deere acquired it, rebranding the machine as the “John Deere-Van Brunt” grain drill. It still retains this official mouthful of a name today.

Appreciate What You Eat

"The Plough-Team," between 1840 and 1897, by Edward Woutermaertens. Public Domain

In the 20th century, seeders became fully mechanized, dispensing with the horse. But while further refinements increased efficiency, the invention was essentially the same as that developed by these early pioneers.

Most city slickers have only the vaguest idea of the complex process behind the things they swallow. It is sobering to realize that in an age before mass food production, a slight variation in any planting step could mean empty bellies. Knowing that our lives of ease are the recent products of generations of bitter hardship can make bland vegetables taste a little better.

Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at [email protected]