On 31 August, the night before the first day of the World Ploughing Championship, the bar of the Hotel Fortuna in the small German town of Reutlingen was crammed with the global ploughing elite. The scene resembled a low-key United Nations afterparty – Swiss, Kenyans, Australians, Latvians, Canadians and French, all slugging back long glasses of German beer.

Agriculture has gone through quite a revolution over the past two centuries, with the introduction of tractors, chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers in the last century. But since the dawn of agriculture thousands of years ago, one thing remained a very common practice right up to now - plowing the soil. In fact, a quick drive through Orange County will help you quickly see that this practice remains common.