In the context of the rapid rise of agricultural mechanization in China, this paper examines the impact of household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services on the land ...leasing behavior of Chinese relatively large-scale farmers. Based on the CFPS2018 survey data, this study suggests that farm machinery is beneficial for expanding the scale of farms. With increases in household-owned machinery, farmers are more inclined to lease-in land, and they are less inclined to rent-out land. The more agricultural machinery services farmers purchase, the more they tend to transfer-in land and the probability of transfer-out land is lower. However, uneven village terrain can weaken the effects of the two kinds of agricultural mechanization on land leasing. Moreover, this study confirms that household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services could positively regulate each other's influence on land leasing, indicating that there is a complementary relationship between the two types of agricultural machinery. Further mechanism analyses show that the channels by which household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services affect land leasing are quite different. The self-purchased machinery of farmers mainly plays a role through labor complementarity effects, while outsourced agricultural machinery services mainly affect land leasing through labor substitution effects.
•With increases in household-owned machinery, farmers are more (less) inclined to lease-in (lease-out) land.•The more agricultural machinery services farmers purchase, the more (less) they tend to transfer-in (transfer-out) land.•There is a complementary relationship between household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services.•Self-purchased farm machinery mainly plays a role through labor complementarity effects.•Outsourced agricultural machinery services mainly affect land leasing through labor substitution effects.
•China’s agricultural machinery operation big data system was developed.•The system integrated positioning data and working data of major manufacturers.•A case study for China’s wheat harvesters ...demonstrated its potential.
Agricultural machinery operations are mainly performed by cross-regional socialized services in China. It is necessary to take advantage of national data system to implement dynamic monitoring, data sharing, and big data applications for agricultural machinery operations. This application note outlines the system composition, principal technology, primary functions, and application examples of the big data system. This system integrates agricultural machinery operations with big data, which can promote scientific decision-making with data management and facilitate more efficient agricultural production. Promoting the effective, orderly, and scientific growth of agricultural machinery operations and the advancement of agricultural modernization is of theoretical and practical importance.
•Task assignment model.•Dynamic and static simulation.•Crop harvesting simulation.
Task assignment is a key problem in multi-machine cooperative navigation. In the context of regional farmland ...operation, multiple agricultural machines often need to complete multiple tasks together. In order to realize the management of multiple agricultural machinery cooperation, studies on task assignment based on the improved ant colony algorithm have been conducted under the farmland operation environment. First, a task assignment model of multiple agricultural machinery cooperation was established by combining dynamic and static task assignments. Then, according to the task assignment model, the task assignment process based on the improved ant colony algorithm was established while considering the match between supply and demand, the operation capacity of the agricultural machinery, and the operation cycle and path cost. Finally, the dynamic and static task assignments of multiple agricultural machinery cooperation based on the improved ant colony algorithm were simulated on MATLAB. Taking the crop harvesting experiment as an example, according to the actual farmland location information of the Zhuozhou Experimental Farm, the different (agricultural machinery, task) combinations were set, and the task assignment results were compared and analyzed. Results showed that the path costs of harvester and grain transporters were reduced by 51.27% and 22.00% respectively, When the quantities of tasks were set to 11, indicating that the improved ant colony algorithm can effectively reduce the path cost. When the quantities of tasks were set to 5, 11, 16 and 22, the average operation cycles were shortened by 67.32%, 37.50%, 55.95%, and 56.37% respectively. The problem of “nearby” in the task assignment was solved to a certain extent, the overload of some agricultural machinery and the idle of other agricultural machinery were avoided, and the operation cycle was shortened. At the same time, based on the static task assignment, the dynamic task assignment was realized in the two scenarios of new tasks and malfunctioning harvesters, thus laying a foundation for further solving the scheduling management problem of multiple agricultural machinery cooperation under a complex farmland operation environment.
To improve the utilisation of peanut vines as animal feed and address the inability of current agronomic and agricultural machinery in China to adapt and the low levels of mechanised peanut ...production, a “three-stage” harvesting mode, “vine cutting harvesting – digging and drying – pickup and picking”, that produces peanut vines suitable for feed was proposed. The general agronomic process of mechanised peanut production under this mode was studied, and the requirements for integrating agricultural machinery and agronomy into each key production process were proposed. Plant characteristics, stubble height consistency and pickup effects were measured and tested in the field. The influence of ridge height differences, ridge width differences and row spacing differences on the variation coefficient of stubble height consistency and their significance were analysed. The results showed that the influence of ridge height differences and ridge width differences was significant and that of row spacing differences was not significant. The influence of pickup spring finger spacing, soil penetration depth, forward speed, variety, stubble height and the variation coefficient of stubble height consistency on the pickup rate and the pickup dropping rate, and their significance were studied. The results showed that the stubble height and its consistency variability coefficient had an extremely significant impact on the pickup rate and the spring finger spacing had a significant impact; the soil penetration depth and forward speed had significant effects on the pickup dropping rate, and the stalk connection force and the stubble height had an extremely significant impact.
•Three-stages proposed: vine cutting & harvesting/digging & drying/pickup.•General agronomic process of mechanised peanut production studied.•Requirements of agricultural machinery & agronomy integrated in each production phase.•Standard machine needs only slight change to adapt mode and realise multiple roles.
•The first model based on GRU to reconstruct missing points in agricultural machinery trajectories is proposed.•A bidirectional feature extraction module is proposed to capture bidirectional ...information of the missing trajectory points.•A lightweight model is customized for massive agricultural machinery trajectory data.•The reconstruction deviation exceeds the Beidou GNSS positioning accuracy.
Agricultural machinery trajectory data often encounters the phenomenon of missing trajectory points, and reconstructing these missing trajectory points is crucial for subsequent researches that require complete and high-quality agricultural machinery trajectory data. In this paper, we propose a new method called Fast-TRGRU to accurately and quickly reconstruct missing points in the trajectory of agricultural machinery. First, we design a novel data preprocessing process to improve the quality of raw data. Next, we introduce a bidirectional feature extraction module (BFE) to simultaneously utilize the bidirectional adjacent subtrajectory information of missing trajectory points. Then, we use gated recurrent unit (GRU) to extract spatiotemporal correlation features from time series data representing agricultural machinery trajectories to reconstruct trajectories. Finally, we reduce the training time of the model by adjusting the structure of the model in the GRU model. To verify the effectiveness of the model, we conducted experiments using 125 real agricultural machinery trajectory samples including 1,111,813 points provided by the Key Laboratory of Agricultural Machinery Monitoring and Big Data Applications of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The experimental results show that when the trajectory missing rate is 10 %, the average reconstruction deviations of the model in longitude and latitude are only 1.80 m and 1.95 m, respectively. When the trajectory missing rate is 60 %, the average reconstruction deviation of the model in both longitude and latitude is still less than 4 m, which is higher than the positioning accuracy of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System. The Fast-TRGRU can provide complete and high-quality data for the analysis of agricultural machinery trajectories, effectively assisting in the research of optimizing agricultural machinery operation paths and evaluating agricultural machinery operation efficiency.
Efficiency and durability are critical challenges for the large-scale adoption of fuel cell powertrains in agricultural tractors due to the demanding nature of farm-related tasks. This study presents ...a novel predictive energy management strategy that uses forecasts of the average load of the farming cycle to achieve stationary fuel cell operation, thus limiting degradation caused by load cycling, high-power, and low-power operation. The recurrent characteristics exhibited by agricultural duty cycles allow the calculation of highly accurate average load prediction, which can be sufficient for a predictive energy management strategy to reduce degradation without hindering fuel consumption. As a result, this forecast is utilized in conjunction with a straightforward and real-time-capable energy management strategy, which foresees the operation of the fuel cell system at the level of the average load. The work is structured into two main contributions: model-based design of the energy management strategy, and experimental validation on a fuel cell powertrain testbed. Three typical agricultural duty cycles were studied to evaluate the benefits of the proposed strategy, demonstrating that energy management strategies can mitigate fuel cell degradation without compromising system efficiency. In particular, the predictive energy management strategy offers the potential to mitigate the negative impact of tractor operational idling time at the headland turns through the reduction of fuel consumption, thereby enhancing overall tractor performance. The experimental powertrain setup stands as an innovative contribution within the research landscape concerning fuel cell powertrains for tractors and validates the benefits of the proposed strategy. Furthermore, the conducted testbed analyses assume significance in highlighting the effects of the energy management strategy on the physical fuel cell operating factors and emphasizing the comprehensive benefits across the powertrain system, particularly with regard to the thermal management of the fuel cell system, where the prevention of derating is achievable through the implementation of the proposed energy management approach. Overall, the findings of this study have important implications for the development of sustainable and efficient farming procedures through the adoption of fuel cell technology in agricultural machinery.
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•Load analysis of agricultural cycles for predictive energy management strategy.•Comprehensive development of predictive energy management strategy.•Significant benefits for fuel cell consumption, lifetime and thermal management.•Experimental validation on fuel cell powertrain testbed.
The article provides an overview of the peculiarities of functioning and analysis of performance indicators of machine-building enterprises in 22 countries of the European Union and Ukraine. The ...article studies profitability indicators of machine-building enterprises, with an emphasis on the peculiarities of approaches to pricing. A comparative analysis of the number of machine-building enterprises and the number of people employed in machine-building in each country was carried out. The indicators of imports of machinery and equipment for agriculture from Ukraine to the EU countries are analysed in terms of the main product groups. A comparative analysis of the activities of the machine-building industry of the EU and Ukraine per enterprise, with special attention to the indicators of costs and investments, was carried out. The volumes of investments in material assets, machinery and equipment, personnel, and energy costs were analysed. An evaluation of these indicators of the functioning of machine-building enterprises of the European Union and Ukraine has allowed to identify the key problems of domestic machine-building enterprises in the context of ensuring the competitiveness of their products in the EU market. In particular, the author has established the existence of fundamental differences between Ukrainian and European machine-building producers in terms of investment in personnel and renewal of fixed assets, which leads to a significant technological lag behind their European competitors and a lag in terms of individual productivity of personnel.
The microstructure, mechanical properties, corrosion behavior, and potential for lightweight applications of Mg-2Zn alloys enhanced with Cu and Ce were investigated. It was observed that the Ce and ...Cu-containing phases displayed various morphologies in the as-cast and extruded conditions. The extruded alloy, containing 0.8 wt% Ce and 0.5 wt% Cu, exhibited optimal mechanical properties, with the yield strength of 289 MPa, ultimate tensile strength of 336 MPa, and elongation of 15.8 %. Grain boundary and precipitation strengthening significantly contributed to the increase in yield strength. After four months of soil burial, the specimen surface showed localized pits and cracks, likely serving as anodes in the areas including Ce and Cu-containing phases. The corrosion rates in different soil environments paddy, vegetable, orchard, and corn fields were 2.029, 2.293, 2.133, and 1.986 mg·cm−2·d−1, respectively indicating variations due to complex soil conditions. The corrosion products included Mg(OH)2 and Mg5(CO3)4(OH)2·4 H2O, among others, throughout the burial period. Furthermore, model assembly in SolidWorks and static structural simulation with ANSYS confirmed the alloy's reliable load-bearing capacity, safety, and potential as the material for lightweight agricultural machinery.
•The microstructure of Mg-Zn-xCe-yCu alloys with different Ce and Cu were characterized.•The extruded alloy with 0.8 wt% Ce and 0.5 wt% Cu has the optimal mechanical properties.•Mg-2Zn-0.8Ce-0.5Cu alloy exhibits good soil corrosion resistance with the relatively low corrosion rate.•Mg-2Zn-0.8Ce-0.5Cu alloy was made into a lightweight agricultural machinery frame and simulated.
•Adopt multi-row side transplanting method to achieve dense transplanting of seedlings.•Positions of transplanting and seedling conveying devices are matched and adjusted.•Based on the Arduino ...control system to achieve precise control of the machine.•Coincidence of the soil entry point and exit point greatly reduces damage to the film.
At present, China is the leading country in sweet potato cultivation worldwide. However, there are still several problems such as high labor intensity, low efficiency of manual transplanting, and lack of machinery for side transplanting for sweet potato seedlings on mulch film. Therefore, a side dense transplanting machine for sweet potato seedlings on mulch film is designed, using a multi-row side transplanting method. It is mainly composed of a transplanting device, a seedling conveying device, a traveling device, and a control system. Based on the agronomic requirements for sweet potato transplanting, the study focuses on the structure and working principle of the complete machine. It involves the detailed structural design and motion analysis of the crank-rocker and cam of the transplanting device. Based on the sweet potato seedlings transportation plan, parameters such as the vertical height of the seedling conveying device, the size of the support frame, and the relative relationship between position of the transplanting device are determined. To ensure the smooth transplantation of sweet potato seedlings, the motor parameters required for each device are calculated and determined. An Arduino control system is developed to manage the coordinated movement of each device. Positioning components are integrated to ensure accurate coordination between the transplanting device and the seedling conveying device. This setup enables the seedling claws to pick sweet potato seedlings and perform the side transplanting on the mulch film. Field test results show the missed rate of seedlings, the qualified rate of transplanting and the qualified rate of transplanting depth are 4.13 %, 91.62 % and 93.86 % respectively. The transplant spacing coefficient of variation and the average spacing between seedlings are 1.90 and 177.06 mm respectively. All indicators of the transplanting machine meet the agronomic requirements for side dense transplanting for sweet potato seedlings on mulch film. The transplanting machine is integrated with sweet potato seedling transplanting agronomy, achieving mechanized transplanting of sweet potato seedlings, reducing labor intensity, and promoting the quality and efficiency of sweet potato production. This research provides a reference for the development of sweet potato seedlings transplanting equipment.
In its historical process, agricultural mechanization has evolved from muscle power to advanced sensor applications, drones and autonomous tractors with the help of technology. The importance of ...agricultural mechanization increases due to reasons such as providing basic food need, reducing costs, eliminating labor problems and obtaining higher yields per unit area. The aim of this study is to evaluate the current situation of agricultural mechanization in Turkey. In this evaluation, the number of tractors, the number of combine harvesters and age groups, the change of agricultural machinery by years, import and export values, and the change of agricultural mechanization indicators by years were examined. While there were 654 636 tractors in 1988, this figure reached to 1 332 139 in 2018 in Turkey. While there were 12 578 combine harvesters in 2000, this value increased by approximately 37% in 2018 to 17 266. Over the years, there has been an increase in agricultural mechanization, fruit harvesters, cotton harvesters, motor scythes and feed spreading trailers, while there has been a serious decrease in the number of animal-borne grain planting machines, agricultural protection aircraft, threshing sled, primitive plough and livestock plows. Considering the import and export values of agricultural mechanization equipment between 2001 and 2018, the import value was approximately 2 times of the export value in 2001, while this value almost equalized in 2016, and the export value increased approximately 1.4 times the import value in 2018.
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