The New Holland T6 weighs 21,000 pounds, boasts 180 horsepower and spews 62% less nitrous oxide and up to 15% less carbon-dioxide than its diesel competitors.
Photo illustration: 731; Source: Courtesy of CNH Industrial
This Tractor Runs on Cow Manure
The New Holland T6 is as powerful as a diesel tractor, but it’s fueled with liquified methane.
Trenance Farm sits at the extreme southwest spit of England, six hours from London and a kicked clod from the Celtic Sea. It’s a dairy farm whose owners, Kevin and Kate Hoare, still milk their cows by hand — 120 bovines, twice a day. But the Hoares are also working with some of the most vanguard climate technology on the planet.
Remember that scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown pulls up in a flying DeLorean sports car, stuffs a bunch of garbage into it for fuel and blasts off? That, essentially, is what’s happening on the Trenance Farm. It is one of the first places in the world where one can find a tractor that runs exclusively on methane, the completely natural and highly polluting byproduct of pretty much any organic decomposition.