Agricultural machinery

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From left to right: John Deere 7800 tractor with Houle slurry trailer, Case IH combine harvester, New Holland FX 25 forage harvester with corn head. Agricultural machinery.jpg
From left to right: John Deere 7800 tractor with Houle slurry trailer, Case IH combine harvester, New Holland FX 25 forage harvester with corn head.

Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that they tow or operate. Diverse arrays of equipment are used in both organic and nonorganic farming. Especially since the advent of mechanised agriculture, agricultural machinery is an indispensable part of how the world is fed. Agricultural machinery can be regarded as part of wider agricultural automation technologies, which includes the more advanced digital equipment and robotics. [1] While agricultural robots have the potential to automate the three key steps involved in any agricultural operation (diagnosis, decision-making and performing), conventional motorized machinery is used principally to automate only the performing step where diagnosis and decision-making are conducted by humans based on observations and experience. [1]

Contents

History

The Industrial Revolution

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the development of more complicated machines, farming methods took a great leap forward. [2] Instead of harvesting grain by hand with a sharp blade, wheeled machines cut a continuous swath. Instead of threshing the grain by beating it with sticks, threshing machines separated the seeds from the heads and stalks. The first tractors appeared in the late 19th century. [3]

Steam power

A German combine harvester by Claas Claas-lexion-570-1.jpg
A German combine harvester by Claas

Power for agricultural machinery was originally supplied by ox or other domesticated animals. With the invention of steam power came the portable engine, and later the traction engine, a multipurpose, mobile energy source that was the ground-crawling cousin to the steam locomotive. Agricultural steam engines took over the heavy pulling work of oxen, and were also equipped with a pulley that could power stationary machines via the use of a long belt. The steam-powered machines were low-powered by today's standards but because of their size and their low gear ratios, they could provide a large drawbar pull. The slow speed of steam-powered machines led farmers to comment that tractors had two speeds: "slow, and damn slow".

Internal combustion engines

The internal combustion engine; first the petrol engine, and later diesel engines; became the main source of power for the next generation of tractors. These engines also contributed to the development of the self-propelled combine harvester and thresher, or the combine harvester (also shortened to 'combine'). Instead of cutting the grain stalks and transporting them to a stationary threshing machine, these combines cut, threshed, and separated the grain while moving continuously throughout the field.

Agricultural machinery types

Tractors

Tractors do the majority of work on a modern farm. They are used to push/pull implements—machines that till the ground, plant seeds, and perform other tasks. Tillage implements prepare the soil for planting by loosening the soil and killing weeds or competing plants. The best-known is the plow, the ancient implement that was upgraded in 1838 by John Deere. Plows are now used less frequently in the U.S. than formerly, with offset disks used instead to turn over the soil, and chisels used to gain the depth needed to retain moisture.

Combines

A John Deere cotton harvester at work in a cotton field John Deere cotton harvester kv02.jpg
A John Deere cotton harvester at work in a cotton field

Combine is a machine designed to efficiently harvest a variety of grain crops. The name derives from its combining four separate harvesting operations—reaping, threshing, gathering, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers and rapeseed. [4]

Planters

The most common type of seeder is called a planter, and spaces seeds out equally in long rows, which are usually two to three feet apart. Some crops are planted by drills, which put out much more seed in rows less than a foot apart, blanketing the field with crops. Transplanters automate the task of transplanting seedlings to the field. With the widespread use of plastic mulch, plastic mulch layers, transplanters, and seeders lay down long rows of plastic, and plant through them automatically.

A British crop sprayer by Lite-Trac Lite-Trac Crop Sprayer.jpg
A British crop sprayer by Lite-Trac

Sprayers

After planting, other agricultural machinery such as self-propelled sprayers can be used to apply fertilizer and pesticides. Agriculture sprayer application is a method to protect crops from weeds by using herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Spraying or planting a cover crop are ways to mix weed growth. [5]

Balers and other agriculture implements

Farmer on a hay harvester in Switzerland Young farmer on a hay harvester in Versam.jpg
Farmer on a hay harvester in Switzerland

Planting crop hay balers can be used to tightly package grass or alfalfa into a storable form for the winter months. Modern irrigation relies on machinery. Engines, pumps and other specialized gear provide water quickly and in high volumes to large areas of land. Similar types of equipment such as agriculture sprayers can be used to deliver fertilizers and pesticides.

Besides the tractor, other vehicles have been adapted for use in farming, including trucks, airplanes, and helicopters, such as for transporting crops and making equipment mobile, to aerial spraying and livestock herd management.

New technology and the future

A New Holland TR85 combine harvester Tr85.jpg
A New Holland TR85 combine harvester

The basic technology of agricultural machines has changed little in the last century. Though modern harvesters and planters may do a better job or be slightly tweaked from their predecessors, the combine of today still cuts, threshes, and separates grain in the same way it has always been done. However, technology is changing the way that humans operate the machines, as computer monitoring systems, GPS locators and self-steer programs allow the most advanced tractors and implements to be more precise and less wasteful in the use of fuel, seed, or fertilizer. In the foreseeable future, there may be mass production of driverless tractors, which use GPS maps and electronic sensors.

Agricultural automation

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines agricultural automation as the use of machinery and equipment in agricultural operations to improve their diagnosis, decision-making, or performance, reducing the drudgery of agricultural work and improving the timeliness, and potentially the precision, of agricultural operations. [1] [6]

The technological evolution in agriculture has been a journey from manual tools to animal traction, then to motorized mechanization, and further to digital equipment. This progression has culminated in the use of robotics with artificial intelligence (AI). Motorized mechanization, for instance, automates operations like ploughing, seeding, fertilizing, milking, feeding, and irrigating, thereby significantly reducing manual labor. [7] With the advent of digital automation technologies, it has become possible to automate diagnosis and decision-making. For instance, autonomous crop robots can harvest and seed crops, and drones can collect information to help automate input applications. [1] [6] Tractors, on the other hand, can be transformed into automated vehicles that can sow fields independently. < ref name= ":1"/>

A 2023 report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) revealed that over 50% of corn, cotton, rice, sorghum, soybeans, and winter wheat in the United States is planted using automated guidance systems. These systems, which utilize technology to autonomously steer farm equipment, only require supervision from a farmer. This is a clear example of how agricultural automation is being implemented in real-world farming scenarios. [8]

Open source agricultural equipment

A self-propelled Apache Sprayer by Equipment Technologies Self Propelled Sprayer made by Equipment Technologies.jpg
A self-propelled Apache Sprayer by Equipment Technologies

Many farmers are upset by their inability to fix the new types of high-tech farm equipment. [9] This is due mostly to companies using intellectual property law to prevent farmers from having the legal right to fix their equipment (or gain access to the information to allow them to do it). [10] In October 2015 an exemption was added to the DMCA to allow inspection and modification of the software in cars and other vehicles including agricultural machinery. [11]

The Open Source Agriculture movement counts different initiatives and organizations such as Farm Labs which is a network in Europe, [12] l'Atelier Paysan which is a cooperative to teach farmers in France how to build and repair their tools, [13] [14] and Ekylibre which is an open-source company to provide farmers in France with open source software (SaaS) to manage farming operations. [14] [15] In the United States, the MIT Media Lab's Open Agriculture Initiative seeks to foster "the creation of an open-source ecosystem of technologies that enable and promote transparency, networked experimentation, education, and hyper-local production". [16] It develops the Personal Food Computer, an educational project to create a "controlled environment agriculture technology platform that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy, and plant growth inside of a specialized growing chamber". It includes the development of Open Phenom, [17] an open source library with open data sets for climate recipes which link the phenotype response of plants (taste, nutrition) to environmental variables, biological, genetic and resource-related necessary for cultivation (input). [18] Plants with the same genetics can naturally vary in color, size, texture, growth rate, yield, flavor, and nutrient density according to the environmental conditions in which they are produced.

Manufacturers

Active

Former

See also

Sources

Definition of Free Cultural Works logo notext.svg  This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0( license statement/permission ). Text taken from In Brief to The State of Food and Agriculture 2022 – Leveraging automation in agriculture for transforming agrifood systems , FAO, FAO.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture</span> Cultivation of plants and animals to provide useful products

Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Threshing machine</span> Agricultural machine

A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of farm equipment that separates grain seed from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with flails: such hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century. Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labour. The first threshing machine was invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle, and the subsequent adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples of the mechanization of agriculture. During the 19th century, threshers and mechanical reapers and reaper-binders gradually became widespread and made grain production much less laborious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Precision agriculture</span> Farming management strategy

Precision agriculture (PA) is a farming management strategy based on observing, measuring and responding to temporal and spatial variability to improve agricultural production sustainability. It is used in both crop and livestock production. Precision agriculture often employs technologies to automate agricultural operations, improving their diagnosis, decision-making or performing. The goal of precision agriculture research is to define a decision support system for whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanization</span> Process of changing from working by hand or with animals to work with machinery

Mechanization is the process of changing from working largely or exclusively by hand or with animals to doing that work with machinery. In an early engineering text a machine is defined as follows:

Every machine is constructed for the purpose of performing certain mechanical operations, each of which supposes the existence of two other things besides the machine in question, namely, a moving power, and an object subject to the operation, which may be termed the work to be done. Machines, in fact, are interposed between the power and the work, for the purpose of adapting the one to the other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Combine harvester</span> Machine that harvests grain crops

The modern combine harvester, also called a combine, is a machine designed to harvest a variety of cultivated seeds. Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labour-saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population engaged in agriculture. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, millet, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers and rapeseed. The separated straw is then either chopped onto the field and ploughed back in, or laid out in rows, ready to be baled and used for bedding and cattle feed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reaper</span> Harvesting machine

A reaper is a farm implement or person that reaps crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reapers that were used in Roman times in what would become modern-day France. The Gallic reaper involved a comb which collected the heads, with an operator knocking the grain into a box for later threshing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvest</span> Process of gathering mature crops from fields

Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish as food, especially the process of gathering mature crops, and "the harvest" also refers to the collected crops. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulses for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting uses farm machinery, such as the combine harvester. Automation has increased the efficiency of both the seeding and harvesting processes. Specialized harvesting equipment, using conveyor belts for gentle gripping and mass transport, replaces the manual task of removing each seedling by hand. The term "harvesting" in general usage may include immediate postharvest handling, including cleaning, sorting, packing, and cooling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swather</span> Harvesting machine

A swather, or windrower, is a farm implement that cuts hay or small grain crops and forms them into a windrow for drying.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanised agriculture</span> Agriculture using powered machinery

Mechanised agriculture or agricultural mechanization is the use of machinery and equipment, ranging from simple and basic hand tools to more sophisticated, motorized equipment and machinery, to perform agricultural operations. In modern times, powered machinery has replaced many farm task formerly carried out by manual labour or by working animals such as oxen, horses and mules.

Case IH is an American agricultural machinery manufacturer. It was created in 1985 when Tenneco bought selected assets of the agricultural division from International Harvester and merged it into its J.I. Case Company. Today Case IH is owned by CNH Industrial, an American-Italian corporation.

New Holland is a global full-line agricultural machinery manufacturer founded in New Holland, Pennsylvania, and now based in Turin, Italy. New Holland's products include tractors, combine harvesters, balers, forage harvesters, self-propelled sprayers, haying tools, seeding equipment, hobby tractors, utility vehicles and implements, and grape harvesters. Originally formed as the New Holland Machine Company in 1895, the company is now owned by CNH Industrial N. V., a company incorporated in the Netherlands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agricultural robot</span> Robot deployed for agricultural purposes

An agricultural robot is a robot deployed for agricultural purposes. The main area of application of robots in agriculture today is at the harvesting stage. Emerging applications of robots or drones in agriculture include weed control, cloud seeding, planting seeds, harvesting, environmental monitoring and soil analysis. According to Verified Market Research, the agricultural robots market is expected to reach $11.58 billion by 2025.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intensive crop farming</span> Modern form of farming

Intensive crop farming is a modern industrialized form of crop farming. Intensive crop farming's methods include innovation in agricultural machinery, farming methods, genetic engineering technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, patent protection of genetic information, and global trade. These methods are widespread in developed nations.

The Gleaner Manufacturing Company is an American manufacturer of combine harvesters. Gleaner has been a popular brand of combine harvester particularly in the Midwestern United States for many decades, first as an independent firm, and later as a division of Allis-Chalmers. The Gleaner brand continues today under the ownership of AGCO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agricultural engineering</span> Application of engineering for agricultural purposes

Agricultural engineering, also known as agricultural and biosystems engineering, is the field of study and application of engineering science and designs principles for agriculture purposes, combining the various disciplines of mechanical, civil, electrical, food science, environmental, software, and chemical engineering to improve the efficiency of farms and agribusiness enterprises as well as to ensure sustainability of natural and renewable resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Driverless tractor</span> Autonomous farm vehicle

A driverless tractor is an autonomous farm vehicle that delivers a high tractive effort at slow speeds for the purposes of tillage and other agricultural tasks. It is considered driverless because it operates without the presence of a human inside the tractor itself. Like other unmanned ground vehicles, they are programmed to independently observe their position, decide speed, and avoid obstacles such as people, animals, or objects in the field while performing their task. The various driverless tractors are split into full autonomous technology and supervised autonomy. The idea of the driverless tractor appears as early as 1940, but the concept has significantly evolved in the last few years. The tractors use GPS and other wireless technologies to farm land without requiring a driver. They operate simply with the aid of a supervisor monitoring the progress at a control station or with a manned tractor in lead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agricultural machinery industry</span> Subsector of the industry

The agricultural machinery industry or agricultural engineering industry is the part of the industry, that produces and maintain tractors, agricultural machinery and agricultural implements used in farming or other agriculture. This branch is considered to be part of the machinery industry.

This glossary of agriculture is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in agriculture, its sub-disciplines, and related fields, including horticulture, animal husbandry, agribusiness, and agricultural policy. For other glossaries relevant to agricultural science, see Glossary of biology, Glossary of ecology, Glossary of environmental science, and Glossary of botanical terms.

The Hands Free Hectare (HFH) project was established in order to develop and showcase agricultural automation by completing the world's first fully autonomous cropping cycle. Based at Harper Adams University, Shropshire, UK, working in collaboration with Precision Decisions.

References

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