Finding New Power for Tractors in Electricity

In the quest to transition away from oil dependence, small-scale farmers are converting their smaller tractors to run on electricity.

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.

If only the U.S. Congress could catch this feverish spirit of innovation that's spreading around the world!

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