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John Deere
Plows in the 1830s were not suitable for sticky sod, so John Deere invented a smooth, steel plow that worked for many farmers. In this title, young readers can discover more about this inspiring innovator and his company.
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Analysis of the determinants of farm power mechanization in Misrak Bedawacho District, Hadiya Zone, Central Ethiopia
This study examined the determinants and current status of farm power mechanization among farmers in Misrak Bedawacho District, Ethiopia, with a focus on identifying factors influencing adoption and the prevailing sources of farm power. Data were collected from 245 respondents through structured questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. Results showed that agricultural operations remain dominated by traditional power sources, with animals (oxen) 51% and human labor 32% constituting the majority, while mechanical power accounted for only 17%. The mechanization index was found to be 15.96%, indicating a low level of adoption or animal drawn dominated. Binary logistic regression analysis revealed that farm size, farmer income, farm power availability, farming experience, access to credit, favorable topography, and stakeholders support significantly and positively influenced the adoption of mechanization (p < 0.05). In contrast, demographic factors such as age, gender, family size, and education level were not statistically significant. The low baseline probability of mechanization adoption suggests that without these enabling factors, uptake is unlikely. The findings underscore that economic capacity, physical access to machinery, and institutional support are more critical drivers of mechanization than personal or demographic characteristics. The study recommended targeted measures such as improving access to affordable farm machinery through rental services and cooperative ownership models. It also emphasized the expansion of credit facilities, the improvement of rural infrastructure, and the provision of training on machinery operation and maintenance. These producers could enhance productivity, reduce reliance on labor-intensive methods, and promote agricultural modernization in the district.
Journal Article
Occupational agricultural injuries among the preadolescent workers of West Bengal, India
Introduction Agricultural injuries are an important factor in mortality and morbidity for populations of preadolescents globally. Working preadolescents in agricultural sector are exposed to occupational risks and injury in India. Objective This study mainly assesses the nature of injuries among the preadolescent agricultural workers of West Bengal, India. Methods The survey was done by collecting the data on agricultural injuries from the Hooghly district of West Bengal. The injury data for 7 years between years 2010 and 2016 were collected by conducting a survey and personal interviews with the victims. The questionnaire-based approach was used for data collection information on the injury characteristics. Results The agricultural injury incident rate was 8.99 (male) and 7.89 (female) per 1000 workers/year. The leading causes of farm injuries were hand tools (65.7%). The most frequently involved tools were spades and sickles. The main cause of hand tool injuries was repetitive work, which lead to fatigue and slippage of hand tools from the hand. The study indicated that preadolescent workers are highly prone to injuries in their occupation, mostly affecting the toes (27.8% and 26.3%) and fingers (24.8% and 25%) in both male and female preadolescents, which consequently affected their health, productivity and work performance. Conclusion This study concludes that (1) agricultural injuries affecting different body parts such as toes, fingers, feet and ankles. (2) Occurrence of injuries was much higher among males than females. (3) Hand tools accounted for the majority of injuries followed by farm machinery. (4) Cut injuries are the main ones followed by lacerations, abrasions, sprains and contusions.
Journal Article
Addressing challenges of field equipment sanitation to reduce the spread of branched broomrape (Phelipanche ramosa) seed among California processing tomato fields
Branched broomrape [Phelipanche ramosa (L.) Pomel], a parasitic weed with a broad host range, is a quarantine pest in California. Phelipanche ramosa plants can produce thousands of tiny seeds that are easily spread by farm equipment. Best management practices for reducing dispersal risk include physical cleaning and disinfestation of farm equipment, but data on the efficacy of sanitizers on weed seeds are limited. A three-phase study was undertaken during 2022 to 2023 to evaluate quaternary ammonium compound (QAC) sanitizer efficacy on P. ramosa seed germinability. First, several QAC ingredients were evaluated at various concentrations (0 to 2.5 g per 100 ml) and exposure durations (1, 3, and 5 min) to develop initial germination curves. Second, the experiments were conducted with three commercial QAC sanitizers (MG4-Quat [Mg4], Flo-Quat, and Cleaner QT-185) at the recommended dose (1% v/v) and a field-relevant exposure duration (1 min). The final experiments evaluated commercial QAC sanitizer efficacy in the presence of various debris types. The initial experiments showed that alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (ADAC), didecyl dimethyl ammonium bromide (DDAB), and didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride (DDAC) effectively prevented P. ramosa germination, but the effective dose for a 50% reduction in P. ramosa seed germination ranged from 0.001% (g per 100 ml) at 10 min with DDAC to 0.35% (g per 100 ml) at 1 min with ADAC. While all three QAC sanitizers reduced seed germination 75% to 100% after a 1-min exposure to the recommended dose (1% v/v), this treatment did not affect seed germination in the presence of soil (100 mg ml−1) or fruit/plant tissue (40 mg ml−1). At higher concentrations of Mg4 (8% v/v), P. ramosa seed germination was reduced by 90% to 100%, even in the presence of soil and plant debris. This study demonstrates that while QAC sanitizers can reduce P. ramosa seed germinability, their efficacy is compromised in the presence of debris. Therefore, physical cleaning to reduce debris loads before QAC application is essential for reducing the risk of P. ramosa seed movement among fields on equipment.
Journal Article
Self-Owned or Outsourced? The Impact of Farm Machinery Adoption Decisions on Chinese Farm Households’ Operating Income
Using farm machinery plays a significant role in easing the issue of slowing growth of operating income among farm households in China. Drawing data from CFPS2018, this study adopts a multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) to analyze the factors influencing farm households’ choices regarding self-owned farm machinery and outsourced machinery services, as well as their subsequent impact on operating income. The results of the study show that the characteristics of the head of household, family, village, and region have a significant impact on the farm households’ selection of whether to use self-owned machinery or outsourced services. Furthermore, the exclusive use of self-owned farm machinery and the combined use of both self-owned and outsourced machinery substantially enhance farm households’ operating income. An additional analysis indicates that these two types of machinery are complementary, and their combined use generates a superimposed effect that further boosts income. These findings suggest that the combined use of self-owned and outsourced machinery is optimal for farm households who wish to expand their operating income.
Journal Article
Governing Common-Property Assets: Theory and Evidence from Agriculture
This paper introduces a refined approach to conceptualising the commons in order to shed new light on cooperative practices. Specifically, it proposes the novel concept of Common-Property Assets (CPAs). CPAs are exclusively human-made resources owned under common-property ownership regimes. Our CPA model combines quantity (the flow of resource units available to members) and quality (the impact produced on the community by the members' appropriation of the resource flow). While these two dimensions are largely pre-existing in the conventional case of natural common-pool resources, they directly depend on members' collective action in CPAs. We apply this theoretical framework to farm machinery sharing agreements—a widespread grassroots cooperative phenomenon in agriculture—using a systematic literature review to generalise the findings from a sample of 54 studies published from 1950 to 2018. Our findings show that in successful CPAs, members endorse and do not deviate from a quantity-quality equilibrium that is collectively agreed upon. Despite the existence of thresholds for both quantity and quality due to (axiological) membership heterogeneity, qualitative changes in respect of the common good are possible in CPAs that promote democratic practices. Our study has potentially strong implications for developing ethics in cooperatives and the sustainable development of communities worldwide.
Journal Article
Design and Analysis of Photovoltaic Powered Battery-Operated Computer Vision-Based Multi-Purpose Smart Farming Robot
Farm machinery like water sprinklers (WS) and pesticide sprayers (PS) are becoming quite popular in the agricultural sector. The WS and PS are two distinct types of machinery, mostly powered using conventional energy sources. In recent times, the battery and solar-powered WS and PS have also emerged. With the current WS and PS, the main drawback is the lack of intelligence on water and pesticide use decisions and autonomous control. This paper proposes a novel multi-purpose smart farming robot (MpSFR) that handles both water sprinkling and pesticide spraying. The MpSFR is a photovoltaic (PV) powered battery-operated internet of things (IoT) and computer vision (CV) based robot that helps in automating the watering and spraying process. Firstly, the PV-powered battery-operated autonomous MpSFR equipped with a storage tank for water and pesticide drove with a programmed pumping device is engineered. The sprinkling and spraying mechanisms are made fully automatic with a programmed pattern that utilizes IoT sensors and CV to continuously monitor the soil moisture and the plant’s health based on pests. Two servo motors accomplish the horizontal and vertical orientation of the spraying nozzle. We provided an option to remotely switch the sprayer to spray either water or pesticide using an infrared device, i.e., within a 5-m range. Secondly, the operation of the developed MpSFR is experimentally verified in the test farm. The field test’s observed results include the solar power profile, battery charging, and discharging conditions. The results show that the MpSFR operates effectively, and decisions on water use and pesticide are automated.
Journal Article
\Status of Farm Machinery Manufacturing in Madhya Pradesh: A Case study\
\"The objective of this paper was to assess the current status of farm machinery manufacturers in Madhya Pradesh along with farm machinery market size, production potential and demand of farm machinery using primary data. To achieve the goal, primary data were collected through pre-tested and wellstructured proforma in 2017-18 adopting post-stratified random sampling technique. The market size of farm machinery manufacturing sector was estimated to be INR 7.56 (±0.21) Billion. There were 53% manufacturers with an annual turnover less than INR 10 Million and only 3 % manufactures had annual turnover more than INR 150 Million. High coefficient of variation for advance tools like vertical milling centre (660%) and CNC (Computer numeric control) machine (358%) indicated non uniform utilization of advance tools which affects the quality of manufactured farm implements. The survey conducted in the study region had manufactures producing around 45 different farm implements for agriculture. Investigation revealed that the production of the implements like rotavator, laser land leveler, reaper, combine harvester, chaff cutter and spray were less than its demand, which prompted the users to import these implements from neighboring States like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab. The study showed that 43 % of the total manufacturers were integrated with Madhya Pradesh Government subsidy scheme. The manufactures of Madhya Pradesh also exported farm implements like reversible Mould Board plough to South Asian country and other developing country\"
Journal Article
How Farm Machinery Rental Services and Off-Farm Work Affect Household Income in China
(1) Background: Most nations struggle to close significant income gaps between high and low earners. While the adoption of farm machinery rental services and off-farm employment may be beneficial, it is unclear whether jointly applying both approaches can raise income levels in rural households or help narrow the income gap within the farm sector. This study investigated scenarios involving both participation in farm machinery rental markets and in off-farm work, analyzing their varied impacts on household incomes based on survey data from 1027 rice producers in rural China. (2) Methods: We employed a two-stage econometric procedure encompassing a bivariate ordered probit model with an endogeneity-corrected unconditional quantile regression model. (3) Results: Rice farmers often simultaneously rent farm machinery services and engage in off-farm work. Both activities positively affect their household incomes; however, these effects vary across different income levels. Renting farm machinery provides greater marginal benefits for lower-income households, while off-farm employment has a stronger impact on higher-income households. Farm machinery rental services appear to benefit disadvantaged households more than off-farm employment opportunities do. (4) Suggestions: To enhance the welfare of lower-income households, policymakers should focus on expanding access to farm machinery rental services.
Journal Article
Determination and Application of Maximum Efficiency Curve of Crawler Electric Tractor Motors
With the excessive use of fossil fuels such as oil, the energy crisis and environmental pollution have become important problems related to people’s livelihoods. In agriculture, as a new type of green agricultural machinery, the electric tractor has the advantages of high energy utilization and no exhaust emission. The motor is the core component of an electric tractor’s drive system. Its characteristics and control directly affect a tractor’s operating efficiency, operating quality, and energy consumption. A motor drive control scheme based on a characteristic curve at the maximum efficiency of an electric motor was adopted to address the problems of low motor power utilization and short continuous operation time on a full charge in electric tractors. By leveraging methods to obtain characteristic curves at the lowest fuel consumption for gasoline engines, we determined the characteristic curve at the maximum efficiency for a motor in a crawler-type electric tractor. Plowing is the most basic form of tractor operation, and it represents the agricultural work that accounts for most of a tractor’s use. A field test was conducted on the drive control in plowing operation based on the curve, and the energy consumed to plow each m2, continuous plowing operation time on a full charge, and operating efficiency were tested. The test results showed plowing power consumption per m2 of about 8.40 × 10−3 kWh and work efficiency of 707.07 m2/h. Compared with the traditional tractor, the cost of plowing 1 m2 by the crawler-type electric tractor was reduced by 20.3%–32.5%. Because the control improves operating efficiency, battery energy consumption is reduced and continuous operation time is extended; hence, the control achieves its purpose.
Journal Article