Letters to the Editor
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Frames of reference allow acceptability
Our current mainstream culture has forgotten about living with and using animals. It'll be hard for most people to "see" a solution using a new fangled technology like horses or camels when they have no frame of reference to understand how you deal with them.
Horses more dangerous than cars? I don't think so looking at the sheer damage to persons and property caused by cars in general.
Manure a problem? Maybe in pickup/distribution. It's one of the cleanest manures with generally no human pathogens for grass fed animals, breaks down quickly in the garden, or can be composted very easily. Weed seeds are probably the biggest problem (and that's why they made hoes.)
Without experience, "normal" can seem very strange. Like the occasional 5th grader I run into that doesn't believe carrots grow underground in *gasp* the dirt. Animals for power shouldn't be panned because we haven't any experience. It's a systems design issue only, with a side order of cultural engineering to make it "normal."
But before we'd have to get all 'primitive', the entire sphere of appropriate technologies for smaller distributed farm operations should be explored. You can get fuel sipping walk-behind implements that allow small-scale farming which has been shown to yield 2-4 times the national average. Even the small-scale hand tool folks like Jon Jeavons are consistently growing enough nutrients and calories for a person for one year, in a temperate climate, in less than 4,000 sq. ft. or 1/10th of an acre. No chemical fertilizers, no crazy inputs, he gets 2-16 times the average yield for a crop and his top soil increases every year. And he doesn't break any backs doing it, either. But these solutions are local to any area, not ones to feed the worldwide distribution middleman machine.
Of course, making any change at all may be too 'primitive' for some. Circumstances will determine needs in the end, I suppose.