There’s a “small iron revolution” happening on farms across Canada.
Even though most farmers and people in agriculture probably see “fat bikes” and “e-bikes” as urban phenomena, these new versions of bicycles are leaping into the farmyards and farm fields in hundreds of places.
“I have some farm friends who have e-bikes (or) big fat tire bikes that they’re using for going out and checking things and using them around the farm,” said Dave Thiessen, who was manning a booth for the Harvest for Kids charity at Ag in Motion.
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Beside him was a bright red fat bike that was getting a lot of attention because one lucky person was going to win it as a draw prize during AiM. Farm families were eagerly filling out entry forms as he chatted with a reporter.
Fat bikes are a robust version of mountain bikes, with wide “fat” tires that allow a rider to cross snow, mud, gravel and other surfaces that are impassable for regular mountain bike tires.
E-bikes come in many forms, but farm-fit ones have fat-ish tires on a tough frame and employ batteries that provide them with dozens of kilometres of power, allowing them to act like off-road motorbikes and gravel road transportation. When combined with human pedal power, their range is good enough for most farm uses.
“Farmers are using them to check crops, using them for checking cows, riding through cows,” said Greg Sparrow, who was selling a range of e-bikes at the AiM tent of Vintage Iron Cycle.
“A lot of our bikes are light. They’re folding. You can throw them onto a sprayer trailer, you can throw them into the back of a truck. If you want to drop a vehicle somewhere and you don’t have two people, you can hop onto your e-bike and rip home pretty quick.”
E-bikes are finding a place in the toolbox of agronomists and crop insurance inspectors — not as a replacement for half-ton trucks, but as a complement. They can be folded, chucked into the truck and then used to get into parts of a field that take a lot of time to walk out to, and which trucks or quads would damage.
A crop insurance inspector told Sparrow at AiM that “his job that was supposed to take three hours took 45 minutes because he could get around the field so fast.”
As he talked with a reporter, a farmer and his daughter came up to chat. Sparrow used to work for John Deere in his area and he was intrigued by the odd-looking bikes on display. That sort of interaction was common for him at the show. When the reporter first approached him, he was talking with a half-dozen boys and young farm men who wanted to know what the bikes could do on-farm.
“I’m seeing my bikes everywhere,” said Sparrow.
— Ed White reports for the Western Producer from Winnipeg.
