Don Loock sits beside his son who is atop their electric lawnmower.
Mike sands rides his non-electric UTV around his property. Sands is interested in purchasing an electric model one day.
While electric vehicles have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, electric agricultural vehicles still remain relatively niche products that are slowly entering into the consciousness of farmers across the country.
Don Loock sits beside his son who is atop their electric lawnmower.
In Rappahannock County, such vehicles, including electric tractors and utility terrain vehicles (UTVs), remain largely under the radar, according to interviews with several local farmers. Hay farmer Chris Parrish, a former member of the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors, cattle farmer Mike Sands, Vigneron Bill Gadino and farmer Don Loock all said there are few, if any farmers, in the county who own electric vehicles for agriculture.
“I’d venture to say it’s not the first thing you’d hear about if you sat around with a group of farmers listening to their conversations,” Sands said of electric farming vehicles. “Farmers, particularly old-time cattle farmers, are not the most progressive guys in the world.” Even if it's not top of mind, he said, local farmers are beginning to think more seriously about electric vehicle technology.
Agriculture is a significant producer of greenhouse gasses in the United States, accounting for about 10% of the country’s total emissions. Transportation, by comparison, accounts for 29% of total emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Agricultural vehicles burned about 5.3 billion gallons of fuel in 2020, according to Bloomberg News. Meanwhile, fuel prices for local farmers are the highest they’ve been in recent memory following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Both issues could be alleviated if electric farm vehicles were to be adopted for widespread use. But those interviewed said that the price of upgrading to electric vehicles is often too steep, especially if they already own a functioning combustion model. Lack of availability can also be a major hurdle standing in the way of ownership, especially with newly emerging technologies like electric tractors that are primarily manufactured by startups.
Sands doesn’t own any electric farm vehicles but is interested in some, especially UTVs, described by one person as a “souped-up golf cart” used for transporting items and people across swaths of farmland. He was in the market for an electric one, but couldn't find any in stock in a time crunch and decided to settle for a gas powered model.
Mike sands rides his non-electric UTV around his property. Sands is interested in purchasing an electric model one day.
For Sands, owning an electric vehicle would be especially prudent since he powers his farm with solar and often produces more energy each day than he needs. Redirecting that leftover energy for transport would be more efficient, he said. “I feel like I could be using electric and not necessarily contributing to the need for coal fired power plants,” Sands said.
While not a farmer, Castleton resident and environmentalist Dick Raines has owned an electric Husqvarna UTV for years, which he uses for hours daily to garden and move materials across his property. “I really am a big believer in the EV world,” said Raines, who was an early Tesla adopter.
Aside from its environmental benefits, electric UTVs don't require nearly as much maintenance as their fuel-guzzling counterparts, which is true of most electric vehicles. That was a big draw for Raines, along with the fact that it’s much quieter than those with combustion engines. “You’re out in the country and you want quiet. It’s such a nice feature,” he emphasized.
Sands is also enamored with the relative noiselessness of electric UTV models. “If I’m looking for sheep or I'm setting fence, being able to hear and process what’s happening around me, as opposed to just having an alternative combustion exhaust to my ear, would be really pleasant,” he said.
Raines’ electric UTV holds a charge for entire days, he said. At night he plugs it into a standard outlet inside his barn to charge it up for use the following day. While Sands predicted that Electric UTVs are the most likely form of electric farm vehicle to be owned in the area because of their universality and relative price parity with non-electric units, both he and Raines said they currently don’t know any other owners in the county.
Some UVT models are marketed toward vineyards, but Gadino, of Gadino Winery, said he doesn’t know of any vignerons in Rappahannock who use electric vehicles for farming. Like others interviewed, he uses electric hand equipment, such as chainsaws and hedge trimmers.
“If I had the money, I would certainly buy one,” Gadino said of an electric UTV, which can retail for many thousands of dollars. “Even a golf cart that you could plug in [would work] because you don’t have to worry about pollution, it’s quiet and gas, of course, is getting more expensive all the time.”
Sands said he’s also interested in obtaining an electric truck, which is becoming an increasingly popular option nationwide. Ford recently unveiled a fully electric version of its classic F-150 model. But he can’t yet justify any of these purchases.
“The only way any of these things make sense to me right now is if you’re at a point in time where you need to buy something,” Sands said. “If I needed to replace my truck right now, I might look at [an electric model] but … I have a perfectly usable internal combustive truck and so I’m not in a position where I’m going to sell that and go out and buy an electric vehicle.”
He also isn't in love with many electric truck designs, which sometimes opt for sleek, futuristic facades. Sands noted that he could envision other farmers poking fun at the design if he owned one. “I just want a truck that looks like a truck,” he said.
Electric tractors have existed since at least the 1990s, but have only come to prominence in recent years, according to Successful Farming Magazine. Still, they remain an emerging technology that is often both expensive and difficult to obtain, farmers said. “I haven’t heard anybody even think about electric [tractors],” Parrish said.
Loock said he’s known vegetable farmers who have converted old school combustion Allis-Chalmers tractors into electric motorized vehicles, a little known hack among farmers that’s been used for years. He’s considered doing that but said, “We don’t do enough cultivating things to make it worth our while. I just always thought it would be fun to sort of do just as … a mechanical project.” If proper electric tractors were more available, he would consider becoming an early adopter.
Currently, he uses an electric lawnmower, which he said is quieter than a gas model and requires significantly less maintenance. “It’s also nice because we can plug it in and, in essence, we know where the electricity is coming from,” he said of the solar panels that power his farm. “I don’t have to ship oil all over the place and go to the gas station again to fill up the lawnmower and stuff — you just plug it in.”
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