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III. Harvesting and crop processing
HARVESTING MACHINERY
Harvesting machinery oil generally classified by crop: reapers for cutting cereal grains and threshers for separating the seed from the pant. The more modern combine cuts, threshes, and cleans the grain in one operation. Corn (maize) harvesting is performed by mechanical corn pickers that snap the ears fro the silk so that only the grain and cobs are ...

Mechanical problems. Mechanization faces many obstacles before wide adoption is possible in topical regions. Difficult soils, stones, stumps, abundant labour, resistance from farmers, lack of incentives, lack of skills, lack of capital, low wages, high cost of machines, lack of dealer service, fragmented land ownership, all contribute to slow development of mechanization. Tropical soils differ markedly from ...

Fallow system and tillage techniques, Dryland farming is made possible mainly by the fallow system of farming a practice dating from ancient times. Bascally, the term fallow refers to land that is plowed and tilled but left unseeded during a growing season. The practice of alternating wheat and fallow assumes that by clean cultivation the moisture received during tha fallow period is stored for use during the...

Biological controls. the question of using biologicall controls has always been of considerable public interest. The control agents include parasites, predators, diseases, protozoa,, and nematodes that attack the insect pests. Biological controls cannot replace insecticides entirely, because nature provides for the survival of both beneficial and destructive insects. Before the population of a parasite or predator..

Monoculture. The practice of growing the same crop each year on a given acreage, monoculture, has not been generally successful in the past, because nonlegume crops usually exhaust the nitrogen in the soil with a resulting reduction in yields; this is particularly true in humid regions. The advent of low-cost nitrogen fertilizers, however m had induced reconsideration of the possible advantages of monoculture.

Methods of application. Fertilizers may be added to soil in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms, the choice depending on many factors. Generally, the farmer tries to obtains satisfactory yield at minimum cost in money and labour.
Manure can be applied as a liquid or a solid. When accumulated as a liquid from livestock areas, it may be stored in tanks until needed and then pumped into distributing machine or into ...

The economics of fertilizers. The practical goal is to determine how much nutrient material to add. since the farmer wants to know how much profit to expect if he buys extra fertilizer, the tests are interpreted as an estimation of increased crop production that will result from nutrient additions. Cost of nutrients must be balanced against value of crop or even against alternative procedures, such as investing ...

Fertilizing and conditioning soil. Soil fertility is the quality of a soil that enables it to provide compounds in adequate amounts and proper balance to promote growth of plants when other factors (such as light, moisture, temperature, and soil structure) are favourable. Where fertility of a soil is not good, natural or manufactured materials may be added to supply the need plant nutrients; these are called ...

On modern mechanized farms, plow bottoms are connected to tractors either as trailing implements or internally. One or more bottoms may be so attached (Figure 2). They are found paired right and left occasionally (two-way), with the advantage of throwing the furrow slice in a constant direction as the turns are made. A variation is the middle breaker, or lister, which is bottom equipped with both right- and ...

I. General techniques
SOIL PREPATION

Mechanical processing of soil so that it is in the proper physical condition for planting is usually referred to as tilling; adding nutrients and trace elements is called fertilizing. Both processes are important in agricultural operations.
Tilling. Tillage is the manipulation of the soil into a desired condition by mechanical means; tool are employed to achieve some ...

Agriculture, Technology of

Agricultural technology can best be defined as the application of techniques to control the growth and harvesting of animal and vegetable products. This technology has a long history, dating. back to the beginnings of mankind. The present article is concerned primarily with relatively modern techniques; historical aspects are covered in AGRICULTURE, HISTORY OF.
Many of the specialized...

Pesticides as a panacea: 1942-62. In 1942 Dr. Paul Müller of Switzerland discovered the insecticidal properties of a synthetic chlorinated organic chemical, dichl9orodiphenltrichloreoethane, first synthesized in 1874 and subsequently known as DDT. Müller received the Nobel Prize for his discover. DDT was far more persistent and effective than any previously known insecticide. Originally a mothproofing agent for...

Modern applications. Modern applications of electricity in farming range from the comparatively simple top some as complex as those in the namufacturing industries. They include conditions and storage of grain and grass; preparation and rationing of animal feed; and provision of a controlled environment in stock rearing houses for intensive pig and poultry rearing and in greenhouses for horticulture crops.

Sheep. Similar crossbreeding, followed by intermating and selection with the crossbreeds, brought major changes in the sheep industries of New Zealand and the United States. The goal in New Zealand was to product more acceptable meat animals, while that in the United States was ro produce animals suited to Western range conditions and acceptable both for wool and mutton.
During the late 19th century, several...

Wheat. Advances in wheat production during the 20th century include improvements through the introduction of new varieties and strains; careful selection by farmers and seedsmen, as well as by scientists; and crossbreeding to combine desirable characteristics (see Figure I for a caparison between wild and cultivated wheat). The adaptability of wheat enables it to be grown in almost every country of the world.

NEW STRAINS: GENETICS
The application of genetics to developing new strains of plants and animals has brought major changes in agriculture since the 1920s. Genetics as the science dealing with he principles of heredity and variation in plants and animals was established one at the beginning of the 20th century. Its application to practical problems came later.
Early work in genetics. The modern science of ...

New techniques. As the development of the sugar beet shows, new techniques may bring particular crops into new prominence. This discussion, however, is confined to three that, in some forms, are old yet today are transforming agriculture in many parts of the world.
Terracing. Terracing, which is basically grading steep land, such as hillsides, into a series of level benches, was known in antiquity and was ...

NEW CROPS AND TECHNIQUES
New crops and techniques are, in reality, modifications of the old. Soybeans, sugar beet, and grain sorghums, for example, all regarded as "new" crops, are new only in the sense that they are grown today in wider areas and have different uses from those of earlier times. Such techniques as terracing, dry farming, and irrigation are nearly as old as agriculture itself, but their widespread ...

Unit machinery . In recent yeas there has been an increase in the use of self-propelled machines in which the motive power and the equipment for performing a particular task form one unit. Though the grain combine is the most important of these machines, self propelled is the most important of these machines, see-propelled units are also in use for spraying, picking cotton, bailing units are also in use for...

Agricultural research and education. Scientists of the 18th century had established the principles that governed plant life. About 1837 the English agriculturalist Sir John Bennet Lawes began to experiment with the effects of manures on plants and crops. In 1842 he patented a process for treating phosphate rock to produce superphosphate and thus initiated the synthetic fertilizer industry. In the following ...

Plows and Plowing. Before harvesting machines could be used, however, the ground had to be prepared, and the fundamental instrument for this purpose was the plow. Though attempts had been made in the 17th and 18th centuries to develop a mathematical theory of ploy design, in a less esoteric way practical men had made significant improvements. Prominent among these was the English inventor Robert Ransom, ...

PROGRESS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES
Italy. Although Italy was the first modern country where a four-course rotation was advocated, traditional farming persisted there into the 18th century and even later. Italian farmers, however, had accepted maize, potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco and relied upon these and other subtropical products for subsistence and sale. The vine continued to be important, as did the olive.

Livestock. Where new fodder crops were introduced into the rotation, more and better livestock were bred and kept. Animal size increased, and meat development was greater. In cows, milk yield improved. Better breeding increased fleece and flesh production in sheep and improved the size of pigs. Horses, essential to transport, were carefully bred. Unfortunately, there were disastrous outbreaks of cattle plague ...

Agricultural recession. What is now called a recession began toward the end of the 13th century. The disasters of the 14th, climactic, medical, and military, followed. Famine resulted from excessively bad weather in 1314, 1315, and 1316; a small recovery followed in 1317. Yields, never high (from six to ten bushels of wheat per acre, or about 120 to 200 litres per hectare; a little more for barley, rye and oats...

Open-field system. The precise origin of the open-field arrangement, which involves long scattered strips of arable land separated from each other by a furrow, balk (ridge of land left after plowing), or mere (boundary), is obscure (Figure 5). The earliest example of this system date from about 800, the Charlemagne was crowed emperor of the West. Usually these strips of land, normally about an acre (0.4 hectare) ...

Farm implements. Most Roman-era hand tools were similar in shape to their modern counterparts. The wooden plow was fitted with an iron share and, later, with a Coulter (cutter). Though it had no moldboard to turn the soil over, it ws sometimes fitted with two small "ears" that helped to make a more distinct rut. Though it could not turn a furrow, ti could invert some of the soil if held sideways. It was usually...

The Mughal century (c. 1600). At the climax of the Mughal Empire, with the arrival and presence of the Western powers, a commercial economy based on oceanic trade was evolving. But no technological revolution in cultivating tools or techniques had occurred since roughly by the time of the Upanișads (c. 600-300 BC).
The crops were broadly divided into rice zones and wheat and millet zones. Rice predominated in ...

THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

India's most important contribution to world agriculture is rice (Orysa sativa), the staple food and crop of most of south, Southeast, and east Asia. Sugarcane, varieties of legumes, and tropical fruit like the mango also are native to the subcontinent.
Archaeological records of this region's prehistory are still incomplete and uneven. Evidence of how the transition from pastoralism to ...

Early history. Archaeological ;information is comparatively scanty. it does not reveal when and how the first farmers settled down to cultivate food crops Written records, available from about 1750 BC, are more conclusive. Tradition accords the honour of inventing agriculture to the legendary emperor Shen Nung, who is said to have carved a piece of wood into a plowshare and bent another piece to make a handle ...