in East Horndon, Essex, in July 1938. Branches of this new company subsequently opened in the United States of America, South Africa, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It later became the holding company for Howard Rotavator Co. Ltd. The Howard Group of companies was acquired by the Danish Thrige Agro Group in 1985, and in December 2000 the Howard Group became a member of Kongskilde Industries of Soroe, Denmark. In modern commercial agriculture, the amount of cultivating done for weed control has been greatly reduced via use of herbicides instead. However, herbicides are not always desirable—for example, in organic farming. When herbicidal weed control was first widely commercialized in the 1950s and 1960s, it played into that era's optimistic worldview in which sciences such as chemistry would usher in a new age of modernity that would leave old-fashioned practices (such as weed control via cultivators) in the dustbin of history. Thus, herbicidal weed control was adopted very widely, and in some cases too heavily and hastily. In subsequent decades, people overcame this initial imbalance and came to realize that herbicidal weed control has limitations and externalities, and it must be managed intelligently. It is still widely used, and probably will continue to be indispensable to affordable food production worldwide for the foreseeable future; but its wise management includes seeking alternate methods, such as the traditional standby of mechanical cultivation, where practical. Industrial use To the extent that cultivating is done commercially today (such as in truck farming), it is usually powered by tractors, especially row-crop tractors. Industrial cultivators can vary greatly in size and shape, from to wide. Many are equipped with hydraulic wings that fold up to make road travel easier and safer. Different types are used for preparation of fields before planting, and for the control of weeds between row crops. The cultivator may be an implement trailed after the tractor via a drawbar; mounted on the three-point hitch; or mounted on a frame beneath the tractor. Active cultivator implements are driven by a power take-off shaft. While most cultivator are considered a secondary tillage implement, active cultivators are commonly used for primary tillage in lighter soils instead of plowing. The largest versions available are about wide, and require a tractor with an excess of (PTO) to drive them. Field cultivators are used to complete tillage operations in many types of arable crop