"Large-scale mechanization was the direction we envisioned for the future development of agriculture. Steam-powered agricultural machinery was currently rather cumbersome and inefficient, but we could also see the importance of mechanization."
As Kade explained, a steam tractor was demonstrating plowing.
As early as the 1830s, people had begun researching the use of steam vehicles to tow agricultural implements for fieldwork. Every country had conducted research into tractors, and East Africa was no exception—though East Africa was already racing on a different track from the others.
Up to the present, however, the steam-powered towing vehicles produced by countries around the world resembled miniature locomotives. Even without sinking into the fields, they would compact the soil terribly.
Britain was the leading name in steam tractors. They could already make steam tractors relatively small, but their exorbitant cost meant that only large farms could afford such agricultural equipment.
Mbeya city's Third State-run Farm was a large farm. After all, once something bore the label "state-run," it generally could not be small in scale, and East Africa was no exception.
Still, not every part of East Africa was as flush with cash as Mbeya city, able to afford such a huge lump of iron. As one of East Africa's four great cities and the center of its heavy industry, Mbeya city was extremely interested in tractors.
Ernst had established East Africa's Tractor Research Institute in Mbeya city, and the tractor at the Third State-run Farm was actually one East Africa had purchased as a reference model for tractor development.
However, Mbeya city's Tractor Research Institute was largely copying the gourd to draw the ladle, taking inspiration from the tractor blueprints researched by Hechingen Energy Power Company.
While Kade was explaining, the children around him had already begun chattering nonstop about the tractor.
"This thing