Largest Agricultural Plow

A Plow also spelled as ‘plough’   is primarily used to turn and break up soil .It is also used to bury crop residues and  helps control weeds. Volunteers at Manitoba Agricultural Museum   have added a new   technological dimension to agriculture. They have smashed world records   by assembling and using a 66 bottom ( 77 ft wide) agricultural plow  at the threshmen’s  Reunion. Organizers assembled a larger than planned 66 bottom plow, built completely from Canadian made Cockshutt   plows manufactured in Brantford, Ontario. Bill Cockshutt, the last CEO of the iconic Canadian company before it was purchased by another machinery manufacturer, was on hand to drop the ceremonial first plow shear into the ground.

At first four 30-60 E Rumely   Steam tractors   pulled a 77ft wide plow   across a field north of the reunion grounds .  Then a modern New Holland T-96-E tractor did the same.  The first plowing pass was by one-hundred-year-old 30-60 E Rumely Oil Pull tractors. The event originally called for 4 E Rumely Oil Pulls to pull the plow but rain earlier in the week degraded plowing conditions and a fifth tractor was needed. As an encore, a single 535 HP New Holland 4 wheel drive tractor with ATI tracks pulled the plow to see if modern agriculture could compete with century old technology.  Despite being only one tractor, it pulled the plow admirably with 65 plow bottoms in the ground. 

The 30-60 E Rumely oil pull tractors had originally created the record in the year 1911. The new modern HP Holland   4 wheel drive   with ATI   tracks proved that seeds sown in new technology has its advantages   on power, optimum capacity, higher energy, efficient enough  and saves  time too. People from across Europe, North America and Australia had come to witness this once in a  life time experience.

Elliot Sims   co chair of Manitoba   Agricultural Museum was delighted by the fact that Museum  has been the proud recipients of both the records. The 1911  30-60 Rumely Oil Pull tractors as well as the current  535 HP Holland Tractor. Leafloor the chief engineer was excited about  breaking the earlier record.

Reunion Board President Chad Bodnarchuk describes the accomplishment as incredible and humbling. He credits the nearly 700 volunteers for making it happen.  The equipment used in the record attempt consisted of a fully functional 66 bottom plow (with 14" plow bottoms), with a hitch system that allowed 5 antique "Rumely Oil Pull 30-60 Type E" tractors (identical to those used to set the first record in 1911) to attach to and pull on the plow at same time in order to muster the power and traction needed  to pull the massive soil . The plow used 6 pre-assembled antique Cockshutt brand plows, combined into one unit using a hitch designed and built by MAM volunteers, and was designed in such a way as to allow 4 of the five antique tractors to remain attached while turning it at the end of the field .

The previous record  for the Largest Agricultural Plow was set by organizers of the Half Century of Progress Show in Rantoul, Ill., saw a plow consisting of 60 14" wide bottoms (the 14" indicates the width of land tilled by each individual plow unit, or " bottom") used to successfully till a patch of land on the show grounds.   

The Largest Agricultural Plow was set by Manitoba Agricultural Museum at Austin, Manitoba, United States of America on November 14, 2010.