![]() ![]() Engines are far more powerful than humans or animals, so they work much faster and more efficiently. ![]() Before the invention of engines, animals or humans had to move farm equipment. Tractors are primarily used to pull plows that till the soil and equipment that plants seeds. The first tractors were little more than an engine and wheels with a steering wheel, but today are cutting-edge machines with advanced computing. At its core, a tractor is a vehicle that provides high pulling power at slow speeds. No agricultural machine is more ubiquitous than the tractor. Let's discuss a few significant types of mechanized farming equipment below. Mechanized Farming Equipmentĭifferent types of equipment are used for various purposes on mechanized farms. Combined with agrochemicals, machines like crop dusters can cover a great area and prevent pests from harming crops. Special equipment to plant seeds and harvest crops reduce the human error involved. Crop yields increase from mechanization too. By reducing the time to plant and harvest as well as the number of people needed to work a farm, they subsequently are far more productive. The mechanization of farms doesn't just mean the work is easier -it means fewer people are needed to grow the same amount of food. The high costs of farm equipment pose a barrier to entry towards mechanizing farms, and it's a cost that can typically only be offset by revenue from selling crops. Subsistence farming is dominant in less developed countries, where there may not be the capital to purchase tractors or other equipment in the first place. This stands in contrast to subsistence farms, whose purpose is primarily to feed the farmer and their families/communities. Modern mechanical equipment is essential to making farms profitable because they lower labor costs and save time. Today, commercial farms are universally mechanized in some form or another. Dominant in Commercial Farming Operations Some of the characteristics of mechanized farming are discussed next. Farming in many places looks different today thanks to agrochemicals and mechanized farming that came out of the Green Revolution. These farmers probably used animals to pull a plow and seed drill and had their families go through the field and pull weeds and kill pests. 1 - Farm animals used to plow a field in France, 1944 The stark difference comes once you look at how those crops were planted, how they're maintained, and how they're harvested.įig. Returning to our farmers from one hundred years ago, what did their farms look like? If you just looked at the fields, probably not much different: rows of neatly planted crops, an innovation from the Second Agricultural Revolution. Farming operations that still use animals for this are not considered mechanized. Plows in and of themselves are also typically not included under the mechanized farming umbrella because for thousands of years they were powered by horses or oxen. Mechanized farming: The use of machinery that replaces human or animal labor in agriculture.īasic tools like shovels or sickles are not considered to be mechanized farming implements because they still require manual labor.
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