Kubota has been in business for more than 120 years and began life as a manufacturer of steel pipes.

Kubota made oil engines in the 1920s and 30s. Kubota bought the Tobata engine company in 1933 and the Sakai engine factory, still an important source of engines for tractors today, was established in 1937.

It was now well and truly in the engine business for the long haul.

Kubota started its agricultural machinery lines with a powered tiller in 1947 just two years after the country had faced the devastating effects of World War II. This was a basic 4hp walk-behind unit that had a tilling width of 64cm (2ft approximately) and was hugely popular in a recovering Japan.

The first ride-on Kubota tractor was the MT-15 model, a 15hp tractor complete with three-point linkage, which was light and manoeuvrable for Japanese and Asian farming, where rice growing is still the dominant crop. This was followed by the L15R tractor, especially for rice farming and use in the waterlogged paddy fields.

The small three-cylinder diesel tractor developed 15hp and weighed just 900kg, about 300kg lighter than the slightly more powerful Ferguson 20D. This tractor had a four forward and two reverse speed gearbox.

The tractor had a full lighting kit and high position oil bath air cleaner, which was the norm for the time. The three-point linkage was solely a position control with no weight transfer system to match the Ferguson design of the time. The front axle was a tubular structure that could be easily changed for wider or narrower row widths.

By the mid-1960s, Kubota was also making rice planters and small rice combine harvesters. Vending machines were growing in importance in Japan and Kubota entered the business in 1963.

It remains a dominant player in Japan which has five million vending machines, one for every 30 people.

By the late 1960s, Kubota was making combine/binders for the rice harvest in Asia. Three bumper years of harvest pushed demand for the machines. Kubota is well known for its mini-diggers and the first Kubota KH1 models were produced in 1974.

In 1979, Nissan took a share in the Spanish Motor Iberica, finally taking complete control in 1987. From then on, the company was named Nissan Motor Iberica. During a short period, Japanese Kubota tractors were assembled and marketed in Spain as Ebro-Kubota. This was a less than successful attempt at the European tractor market by Kubota, which reverted to Japanese assembled tractors by the early 1980s.

By 2005, the company that made its first tractor in 1960 had produced some three million Kubota tractors for sale around the world.