Mechanized Farming

11 Key excerpts on "Mechanized Farming"

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  Agricultural Automation

  Fundamentals and Practices

  • Hazem Shawky Fouda(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  5.4. TRACTOR MECHANIZATION Mechanization is the application of mechanical technology to tasks, operations or systems of agriculture for the purpose of increasing output, reducing costs or improving resource distribution and utilization. The Agricultural Automation: Fundamentals and Practices 96 purpose of mechanization is to make man a more efficient director of power and enable him to intensify his production system. His capacity to work depends on the power available to him. Basically, the process of agricultural production combines land, labor, and capital in a manner determined and supervised by the farmer acting in his role as manager. The nature of changes in the process of production depends on the quantities of the factors available to him. It is to be assumed that the introduction of new capital into the production process is aimed at increasing production. Comprehension of the influence of agricultural mechanization and the possibilities of shifting the production function upward requires an understanding of the farming systems into which mechanization should become intensified (Sims, 2007) (Figure 5.2). Figure 5.2: Tractor mechanization. Source: https://www.dailybusinessmail.com/odisha-government-pm-kisan-scheme/. Bottlenecks develop because soil preparation, planting, weeding, and harvesting require much time but must be accomplished within limited time periods due to the existence of exogenously determined factors such as the time distribution of rainfall. One factor which limits the expansion of agricultural production in agriculture is the scarcity of power and suitable mechanical implements. Indeed the role of power is so central to an agricultural system that a change from one source to another is likely to Types of Agricultural Mechanization 97 alter the whole farm structure due to its effect on total labor requirements and the distribution of labor peaks and slack periods.

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  Integrated Farming System Practices

  Challenges And Opportunities

  • Sankarsana Nanda(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • NEW INDIA PUBLISHING AGENCY (NIPA)

    (Publisher)

  Mechanization of agriculture is essential for optimal utilization of vital inputs for crop production system such as soil, water, seed, fertilizer, pesticide and labour force leading to higher productivity and reduced cost of production for greater profitability. Thus with the support of mechanization, the agrarian sector as an enterprise needs to become sustainable and economically competitive which coincides with the objectives of the Integrated farming System concept. Mechanization also imparts capacity to the farmers to carry out farm operations with dignity, comfort and freedom from drudgery, making the farming agreeable vocation for educated rural youth as well. It helps the farmers to achieve timeliness and precisely meter and apply costly input for better efficacy and achieve higher productivity with reduced application of inputs. Small and marginal farmers now make use of high capacity agricultural machines on custom hire basis to enjoy the economic benefits. As such, the broad subject of agriculture can be understood as production agriculture, which takes care the field operations in the crop production system for higher productivity and post production agriculture, better known as post harvest technology which looks for reducing the loss of produce and value addition for economic gains. The IFS outlines the need of sustainability for farmers with limited resources of land, water and economy while mechanization aims at maximizing the profitability in agricultural 16 Mechanization for Small Farmers in Integrated Farming Systems S. K. Swain Integrated Farming System Practices: Challenges & Opportunities, pp 417-437 © 2016, Editor, Prof. Sankarsana Nanda New India Publishing Agency, New Delhi, India College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Orissa University of Agriculture & Technology, Bhubaneswar-751003, Odisha, India 418 Integrated Farming System Practices system with a commercial attitude.

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  Drought Management and Desertification Control: Still Miles to Go

  • Dhir, R P(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Daya Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 6 Agricultural Mechanization in Arid Regions of Developing Countries: Towards Enhanced Productivity C. Gomes, F.M. Hameed, N.N. Nasiruddin, M.M. Afiq and N. Abdullah Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM),43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Utilization of mechanized agricultural tools to upgrade farm operations in arid regions of developing countries is one of the best solutions available for global food crisis. Various efficient mechanized systems have been developed for agricultural applications in the last few decades. The mechanization is available for all phases of agricultural procedures; from soil preparation, up to gathering and storing of harvest. This study reviews the status of research and development in these techniques that are currently in use in the agriculture sector, with special attention to their applications in arid areas. Countries with arid or semi-arid regions could consider farm technique mechanization as a tool of augmenting existing methods to achieve high socio-economic goals. Mechanization optimizes labour management, cost and time of operation and quality of the yield. It also preserves two key resources of agriculture: cultivable soil and freshwater. Our study shows that there is a promising future for mechanization of agricultural techniques, especially in dry zones, to cater for the much-needed food supplies to the population in developing countries. Keywords : Agriculture, Mechanization, Arid region, Developing countries, Cultivable soil. This ebook is exclusively for this university only. Cannot be resold/distributed. Drought Management and Desertification Control 64 | Introduction There is a need for a change of existing agricultural techniques to resolve various issues that have emerged at the field-level in arid region of developing countries (Mada and Mahai, 2013).

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  Agroecology, Ecosystems, and Sustainability

  • Noureddine Benkeblia(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  6.6 DISCUSSION: MECHANIZATION AND ITS SOCIOECOLOGICAL IMPACT Agriculture, including Mechanized Farming, plays a crucial role in shaping the economy of most African countries, securing food and generating jobs for the overwhelmingly rural population. Fifty-eight percent of the active workforce in Africa is employed in agriculture, while 83% of the population depend on farming for their livelihood (FAO 2008). The Sudanese economy is predomi-nantly agricultural (including crop and livestock production, forestry, wildlife, and fisheries, which altogether contribute an average 44.4% of GDP). The agricultural sector contributes more than 85% of Sudan’s export earnings and about 90% of the national food requirements. It accommodates more than 80% of the population (Abu Raida 2013). Moreover, in the1980s one–two million laborers moved to the Mechanized Farming areas, where they could find three or four months’ work at weed-ing and harvest time (UNEP 2007). This situation is no longer sustainable, and the past contribution of agriculture to socioeconomic life ought to be revised. Currently, most land under agricultural mechanization has experienced severe degradation, as highlighted in the previous sections, and agriculture has failed to meet its socioeconomic objectives. In turn, it has become a major factor fuelling land use conflict, especially in a country like Sudan with multiple ethnicities, religions, and races. Two scenarios have been highlighted to evaluate and measure the current situation of mecha-nized farming. These are the total number of farmers and the farmers–herders relation. The number of farmers and agricultural laborers involved in Mechanized Farming is decreasing very sharply. Only about 9800 farmers “owned” mechanized schemes in Gedarif in 2007, compared with the total population of 1,336,662 persons (CBS 2011). This implies that only 5% of the total population are benefiting directly from Mechanized Farming.

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  Conservation Agriculture for Africa

  Building Resilient Farming Systems in a Changing Climate

  • Amir Kassam, Saidi Mkomwa, Theodor Friedrich, Amir H Kassam, Saidi Mkomwa, Theodor Friedrich(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • CAB International

    (Publisher)

  Availability of mechanized implements, spares and services has a fundamental influence on whether a farmer adopts mechanized CA or not. Functional equipment will need to match the available power sources (hand, animal or tractor), the different soils and crops, terrain and ergonomic needs. Mechanization equipment and machinery are in many cases not available close to the end users due to a number of causes, including in particular: poor distribution and dealership systems; inadequate local manufacturing; weak artisan, blacksmith and craft workshops; and marketing difficulties.

  Poor distribution and dealership systems

  The development of an efficient distribution and dealership system is affected by the cost of capital and management effort tied up in stocks due to the high seasonality of sales of mechanization equipment. The demand is also very unpredictable, as it is usually correlated with agricultural performance in the previous year. Agricultural machines are heavy, bulky and hence costly to transport, a problem that is perpetuated further by the poor transport infrastructure (railways, waterways and rural roads) for most of Africa. These constraints limit the scope of business in agricultural machinery and many traders opt for fast-moving consumer goods with more regular sales.

  Inadequate local manufacturing

  Inadequate local manufacturing is attributed to low demand for the mechanization equipment. This, in turn, is attributed to inadequate knowledge by farmers of mechanized CA technologies and lack of comprehensive demand forecasts, obliging manufacturers to rely on often ill-informed estimates. Economies of scale demand a minimum number of units to be manufactured to justify the invested capital.

  Lack of trade financing is another important factor. Manufacturing and trading in agricultural machinery and spares is highly seasonal, creating cash-flow problems for most of the year. About 70% of annual machinery sales are realized in three to four peak farming months of a year. In order to ensure timely delivery at the start of the farming season, suppliers need to build up their stocks off-season when their sales are at the lowest level. This is difficult to manage when credit is not easily accessible and is very expensive.

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  The Economics of Agricultural Development

  World Food Systems and Resource Use

  • George W. Norton, Jeffrey Alwang, William A. Masters(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 The controversy arises because machinery usually substitutes for labor or animals. In many developing countries, labor is abundant and its cost is low. Alternative employment opportunities outside agriculture are limited, so that labor displacement is undesirable. Therefore, mechanization is most profitable in countries where land is abundant, labor is scarce, and capital is cheap; this situation would seem to exist in relatively few countries,

  Does this mean that there is little role for agricultural mechanization? Not necessarily, but the types of mechanization should be different from what is observed in most Western developed countries. Highly productive cropping systems, whether on small or large farms, can often benefit from more precise planting depths and fertilizer placement, mechanically pumped irrigation water, mechanical threshing (but usually not harvesting unless labor is scarce), transport, power spraying of pesticides, and tilling when timing is critical for multiple cropping. Many of these mechanical devices, however, may be handheld (e.g., sprayers) or stationary (e.g., pumps and threshers). Even in areas where labor is usually abundant, shortages can occur in certain seasons, which, if relieved through mechanization, could increase the overall demand for labor.

  Individual farmers will consider the private profitability when deciding whether to invest in a machine. If very large farms exist in countries with surplus labor in agriculture, operators of these farms may prefer labor-saving machinery because it allows them to deal with fewer employees, and, given the transactions costs and capital subsidies that may exist, it may be more privately profitable to follow large-scale mechanization even if society as a whole would be better off without it. Such behavior is one of the reasons why land reform is so important to many developing countries (see Chapter 13 ).

  Treating cattle for parasites in Ethiopia

  Governments and foreign assistance agencies must be careful not to encourage non-optimal mechanization (from society’s viewpoint) through ill-advised subsidies or other means. Mechanization is inevitable over time, but the type of mechanization should be appropriate given the relative endowments of land, labor, and capital. Certain government policies, such as those influencing exchange rates, indirectly affect the prices of capital-intensive inputs such as machinery. Impacts on relative prices of inputs should be considered during policy formulation.

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  Engendering Agricultural Development

  Dimensions & Strategies

  • Binoo P. Bonny, K P Sudheer, Smitha S, Binoo P. Bonny, K P Sudheer, Smitha S(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • NIPA GENX Electronic Resources and Solutions Pvt Ltd.

    (Publisher)

  The lesser land area deters the farmers from mechanization and hence in these small farms, there is increased participation of women as agricultural labor. Traditionally women are engaged in the more monotonous and hard work, taking more time for completion, and also in works Gender Friendly Tools and Equipments in Farm Mechanization 223 that require round the clock engagement such as processing, homestead farming, value addition, etc. However, various socio-cultural factors and economic reasons have hindered the adoption of farm technologies by women in India. Women often opt out of the outside-homestead agricultural economic opportunities. The new technology involves the need for costlier inputs, intricate knowledge, and complex skills. As agriculture is being increasingly feminized, it is now becoming imperative that the women who are involved in agriculture embrace such new technologies to sustain and improve their income, improve their time use efficiency, reduce or tide over their stress and strain due to agriculture, to diversify and bring out quality products. To sustain an economic level of productivity in agriculture, it becomes imperative that farms and farming operations be mechanized. Mechanization in the Indian context should have a focus on improved and novel equipments and increased farm power availability. It should be a mix of mechanical power and human power for sustained Mechanized Farming. Mechanization of agricultural operations on a farm reduces the drudgery, increases timeliness and efficiency of work, and increases profit. Agricultural machinery available today is more suited to male anthropometry. Operator comfort, safety, operation mechanisms, operator controls are all designed taking the male operator/labourer into account. The female agricultural workers are not even considered as participants in farm. The female agricultural workers are not even considered as participants in farm mechanization during the design process.

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  Soil-Specific Farming

  Precision Agriculture

  • Rattan Lal, B.A. Stewart, Rattan Lal, B.A. Stewart(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  More infor-mation about yield mapping is provided in Section 1.7 below. Later, interest in GPS shifted to its use in navigating agricultural machinery (Zhang et al. 1999) and autosteering (Keller et al. 2001). More information about these applications is described in Section 1.8 below. TABLE 1.2 Early Advances in the Concept and Testing of Farming by Soil, Variable Rate Fertilizer, Management Zones, and Precision Farming Research Area Nature of Contribution Key References Farming by soil Proposed concept Robert (1982), Rust (1985) Variable rate fertilizer Machinery development and field testing Hummel (1985), Luellen (1985), Ortlip (1986), Schmitt et al. (1986), Borgelt et al. (1989, 1994), Carr et al. (1991), Mulla et al. (1992) Management zones Proposed and tested concept Mulla (1991, 1993), Mulla et al. (1992), Doerge (1999), Fraisse et al. (2001) Precision farming Proposed concept Schueller (1991, 1992) 8 Soil-Specific Farming 1.8 AUTOMATED TRACTOR NAVIGATION AND ROBOTS Precise automated navigation has been one of the most intense areas of research and implementa-tion over the last three decades. The advantages of this approach include reduced operator fatigue, elimination of machinery overlaps and skips, and improved efficiency in fuel usage and prod-uct application. Navigation of agricultural machinery has been studied for at least 75 years since Andrew (1941) patented a method for automated plowing of circular fields based on the distance to center using a cable spool system. Reid and Searcy (1987) used near-infrared computer vision to distinguish straight rows of crop from bare soil that could be used for straight-line navigation. Dust and vibration of the camera were the main limitations of computer vision (Reid et al. 2000; Wilson 2000). Triangulation of agricultural machinery positions using radio beacons (Palmer 1991, 1995) or microwave signals (Searcy et al. 1989b) required good line of sight and significant setup of equipment in the field.

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  Take Out Hunger

  Two Case Studies of Rural Development in Basutoland Volume 39

  • S. Wallman(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5‘Farmech’ Mechanization Scheme (from 1961)

  BACKGROUND TO Mechanized Farming IN BASUTOLAND

  Reference has been made in previous sections to the geographic and sociological factors contributing to Basutoland's low agricultural production and to the widespread lack of confidence in agriculture as a means of making money (see pp. 5, 37, 61). No single innovation could be expected to control or even to affect all these factors. While mechanization could change the entire picture of agriculture in Basutoland, its immediate advantage applies directly to one phase in the farming cycle.

  There is, in lowland Basutoland, a critical period of between forty and sixty days for ploughing, variation depending on rainfall and temperature in any particular season. All ploughing and a good deal of planting must be completed within that time since a late-started crop runs the risk of being caught by frost before it has matured. But all the ploughing and much of the planting depend on the availability of draught oxen which, at the time when these operations must be done, are weak after months of drought and poor grazing (cf. Sheddick, 1954, p. 83). Ploughing begins as soon as the first rains fall; there is no grass in the lowlands until these rains have fallen. The available quality and quantity of oxen cannot therefore begin to cope with the burden of work created by the urgent need to plant immediately after the rains. As a result many peasants find it impossible to plough and plant properly during the critical period, and some have give up hope of working their lands at all (see Village Economy, Table 1).

  It is at this point that mechanization can be of inestimable value. By supplementing or replacing animal power with tractor power farming operations can be speeded up to fit the exigencies of the growing season and might even be carried out more efficiently. With the need for oxen thus reduced, the number of largestock kept in the lowlands could also be reduced and the pressure on grazing ground itself mitigated.

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  Precision Farming

  Soil Fertility and Productivity Aspects

  • K. R. Krishna(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Apple Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Geographic and Economic Aspects of Precision Farming 4 CONTENTS 4.1 Geographic Aspects of Adoption of Precision Farming .................................. 119 4.1.1 Precision Farming in North America ..................................................... 121 4.1.2 Precision Farming in South American Cropping Zones ........................ 125 4.1.3 Precision Farming in the European Farming Belts ................................ 127 4.1.4 Precision Farming in Africa and West Asia ........................................... 129 4.1.5 Precision Farming in Asian Cropping Zones ........................................ 130 4.1.6 Precision Farming in Australian Farming Zones .................................. 134 4.2 Economic Aspects of Precision Farming ......................................................... 135 Keywords ................................................................................................................. 150 References ................................................................................................................ 150 4.1 GEOGRAPHIC ASPECTS OF ADOPTION OF PRECISION FARMING Precision farming has been adopted in several agricultural belts of the world. It is now a popular agronomic procedure that involves series of sophisticated instrumentation and is specific to a site or field. However, according to Swinton and Lowenberg-De-Boer (2005) adoption of precision farming in different continents has been uneven and scattered in certain geographic regions and more pronounced in certain other farming regions. Further, they suggest that not all aspects of precision farming are adopted in all the regions. Actually, there are five aspects to precision farming. They are grid sampling, soil analysis and mapping, global positioning systems, variable rate inputs (fertilizer spreading), and yield monitoring. Yield monitoring is sometimes tied with soil fertility (productivity) mapping.

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  Mechanization of Horticulture

  • Mandhar, S C(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Daya Publishing House

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2 Status of Mechanization of Agriculture Agriculture needs timely operations and agricultural jobs are very strenuous. Due to higher level of education in the rural area youth is migrating to cities where they get less strenuous jobs and better wages. The Government of India has also introduced the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as per which the rural unemployed person is entitled for 100 days work at the rate as per minimum wages act. Due to this the availability of labour has reduced in the villages. The mechanization of Indian agriculture is the need of the day. India is producing largest number of tractors 6 lakhs ( Table 2.3 ) in the world. However, these are only used for seed bed preparation and seed sowing to a limited extent and for farm transport. Very few tractor operated sprayers / dusters, weeders and harvesters are available. The tractor is highly under utilized as this is used for 300-400 hours per year. The tractors of 31-40 hp are mostly popular in India and on an average the expenditure per day is about Rs. 2500 per day and for economical consideration any tractor operated implement has to work equivalent to 20 to 25 labours. The irrigation and threshing operation of crops is mechanized to a great extent using stationary threshers and electric or diesel operated pumpsets. The cultural practices followed for cultivation does not permit entry of tractor in the field after crop germination. The necessary cultivation practices are to be followed for mechanization of weeding, spraying and harvesting and necessary machinery needs development. 2.1 History of Agriculture Mechanization in India Before independence bullock drawn country plough, blade harrow (bakhar) wooden peg tooth harrow and wooden plank were used for This ebook is exclusively for this university only. Cannot be resold/distributed. pulverization, compaction and smoothening of seed bed.

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