The Safe Tractor Operations series contains six articles devoted to tractor safety. This publication aims to familiarize new and beginning farmers, Extension agents and specialists, and the public ...with safe tractor operations. It gives guidance about how everyone in an agricultural operation can work together to make using tractors safer. Written by Serap Gorucu, Carol J. Lehtola, and Charles M. Brown and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, June 2024.
The Safe Tractor Operations series contains six articles devoted to tractor safety. This publication discusses the serious risks that extra riders on tractors face. Written by Serap Gorucu, Carol J. ...Lehtola, and Charles M. Brown and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, June 2024.
Attracting and retaining skilled workers in agriculture is a global problem. Shortages of essential workers disrupt supplies of goods and services from the point of production on farms through ...manufacturing, transport, to ultimate consumption. The global pandemic’s effect on food supply was a salutary lesson in the effects of a diminished agricultural workforce. Agricultural mechanics are vital to productivity. The present research used the social cognitive career theory to explore agricultural mechanics’ careers. An exploratory qualitative study deployed interviews to collect data from N = 19 mechanical trade workers. Interviews were centered on participants’ descriptions of their work regarding theoretical constructs including self-efficacy, outcome expectations, satisfaction, dispositional traits, and contextual affordances. Reflective thematic analysis of the data produced concordance with key constructs of the social cognitive career theory sufficient to justify its utility for research with this specific agricultural occupation. This research makes an important contribution to the literature of vocational psychology which can and should contribute to solving the complex problem of supporting a workforce needed for agriculture’s ongoing challenge of feeding and clothing the world’s growing population.
This study was carried out in the groundnut basin of Senegal, which is characterized by a cereal/legume rotation system in rainfed agriculture. It aimed to analyze the impact of equipment used on ...farms on crop yields. The methodology used is based on producer surveys and econometric analyses of the log-linear type. The results revealed an under-equipment of farms in the rainfed system. The current level of farm mechanization has a positive effect on land productivity, but yield increases are small and insignificant for groundnuts, millet and especially maize. The study showed that the current level of equipment on farms, even when doubled, does not conducive a significant increase in yields per hectare of the different crops in the groundnut basin. This study reinforces the argument that the optimization of farm equipment on farms plays a determining role in the expression of yield and ultimately in agricultural productivity.
The Montagu's harrier Circus pygargus is considered a rare species at the Italian level, and vulnerable at the European level. The main threat for these farmland birds is represented by agricultural ...practices; in fact, it nests on the ground in agricultural environments; therefore, at harvest time nests are often destroyed (with the eggs and chicks) by farm machinery. We examined the reproductive traits (clutch size, laying date, hatching, and fledging date and success) of the Montagu's harrier population in central Italy (about 10% of its population in Italy) where nest protection has been implemented through electric fences and metallic meshes. By using a Bayesian probabilistic network, we modeled the sequence of events that determine its reproductive success (percentages of eggs hatched and chicks fledged) and simulated the effects of different environmental and management scenarios. Our model explained the hatching and fledging success with 90.20% and 95.12% accuracies, respectively. We found that crop type and height, laying date, type and delay of nest protection have specific effects on the reproductive success of this population. Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to optimize the monitoring of this population and significantly increase its reproductive success by acting selectively upon the environmental and management attributes of the breeding area. Our decision tool allowed us to produce several rules for the optimized monitoring and conservation of the Montagu's harrier population in central Italy. The methodological approach proposed here is suitable for application to any farmland bird population on a local scale.
Cette étude a été réalisée dans le bassin arachidier du Sénégal, caractérisé par un système de rotation céréales/légumineuses en agriculture pluviale. Elle visait à analyser l’impact des équipements ...utilisés dans les exploitations agricoles sur les rendements des cultures. La méthodologie utilisée repose sur des enquêtes auprès de producteurs et des analyses économétriques de type log linéaire. Les résultats ont révélé un sous-équipement des exploitations agricoles dans le système pluvial. Le niveau actuel de mécanisation des exploitations a un effet positif sur la productivité de la terre mais les accroissements de rendement sont faibles et insignifiants pour l’arachide, le mil et surtout pour le maïs. L’étude a mis en évidence que, le niveau d’équipement actuel des exploitations, même doublés, ne favorise pas un accroissement significatif des rendements à l’hectare des différentes cultures dans le bassin arachidier. Cette étude renforce l’argument selon lequel, l’optimisation de l’équipement des exploitations agricoles en matériels agricoles joue un rôle déterminant dans l’expression du rendement et au final dans la productivité agricole.
This study was carried out in the groundnut basin of Senegal, which is characterized by a cereal/legume rotation system in rainfed agriculture. It aimed to analyze the impact of equipment used on farms on crop yields. The methodology used is based on producer surveys and econometric analyses of the log-linear type. The results revealed an under-equipment of farms in the rainfed system. The current level of farm mechanization has a positive effect on land productivity, but yield increases are small and insignificant for groundnuts, millet and especially maize. The study showed that the current level of equipment on farms, even when doubled, does not conducive a significant increase in yields per hectare of the different crops in the groundnut basin. This study reinforces the argument that the optimization of farm equipment on farms plays a determining role in the expression of yield and ultimately in agricultural productivity.
Agricultural production is vital for the stability of the country's economy. Controlling weed infestation through agrochemicals is necessary for increasing crop productivity. However, its excessive ...use has severe repercussions on the environment (damaging the ecosystem) and the human operators exposed to it. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been proposed by several authors in the literature for performing the desired spraying and is considered safer and more precise than the conventional methods. Therefore, the study's objective was to develop an accurate real-time recognition system of spraying areas for UAVs, which is of utmost importance for UAV-based sprayers. A two-step target recognition system was developed by using deep learning for the images collected from a UAV. Agriculture cropland of coriander was considered for building a classifier for recognizing spraying areas. The developed deep learning system achieved an average F1 score of 0.955, while the classifier recognition average computation time was 3.68 ms. The developed deep learning system can be deployed in real-time to UAV-based sprayers for accurate spraying.
This paper is about the performance of the base-cutter BONEM blades in the sugar cane harvester machine CASE-IH 7000, by means of a flaw analysis and experimental field test in real condition of work ...by mass loss method, for determination of the tools wear. As fundamental results, it was obtained that the base cutter blades are responsible for more than 50% of the system flaw and that the magnitude of the wear during 48 hours of working period provokes that the tool losses its total capacity of work. Keywords: Flaw Analysis, Wear, Mass Loss Method, Capacity of Work. En el presente trabajo se analiza el desempeno de los segmentos de corte base BONEM en las cosechadoras de cana de azucar CASE IH 7000, mediante un analisis de fallas y la realizacion de un ensayo experimental de campo en condiciones reales de explotacion, para la determinacion del desgaste de estas herramientas por el metodo gravimetrico. Como resultados fundamentales se obtienen que los segmentos de corte base son los responsables de mas del 50% de las fallas del sistema, y que la magnitud del desgaste provoca que en un periodo estimado de 48 horas de labor la herramienta perdera su capacidad total de trabajo. Palabras clave: analisis de falla, desgaste, metodo gravimetrico, capacidad de trabajo.
To address the issues of tractors using too much fuel and not being energy efficient, a predictive control strategy based on Pontryagin's minimum principle integrating working condition prediction is ...proposed for agricultural hybrid tractors. The Dongfanghong 1804 tractor is being used for research. Firstly, the main parameters of the hybrid drive system are determined and modeled. Secondly, based on the adaptive cubic exponential forecasting method, the working condition information for a period of time in the future is predicted through historical working condition information. Furthermore, combining the predicted working conditions information, the goal is to minimize the total energy consumption cost of the entire machine. Motor power and diesel engine power are control variables. The battery state of charge is a state variable. Subsequently, a predictive control strategy based on Pontryagin's minimum principle integrating working condition prediction is proposed. Finally, the simulation test is carried out based on the MATLAB simulation platform. Research indicates: under plowing conditions, compared with the power following control strategy, the proposed predictive control strategy can effectively manage the performance of the diesel engine and motor, ensuring they operate at their most efficient level. The total energy consumption costs of the power following control and predictive control strategies are 37.17 China Yuan (CNY) and 33.67 CNY, respectively. The cost of energy used is decreased by 9. 42%, which helps make tractor field plowing more efficient and economical.
In order to study the dynamic interface mechanical behavior between soil and agricultural machinery and reveal the causes of tillage resistance, three kinds of bionic furrow opener were designed ...according to the characteristics of earthworm head surface curve, using the discrete element method to simulate and analyze the process of the furrow openers. The results showed that the order of ditching resistance from large to small is traditional opener, bionic corrugated opener, bionic ridgeline opener, bionic composite opener. With the same ditching speed, the drag reduction effect of the three bionic openers increases with the increase of the ditching depth. During the process of increasing the depth from 30 mm to 60 mm and 90 mm, the ditching resistance of the traditional opener increased from 11.56 N to 28.32 N and 48.61 N as well as the maximum drag reduction ratio increased from 5.58% to 7.20% and 8.93% for the bionic composite opener. With the same ditching depth, the bionic composite opener reached the highest drag reduction rate of all bionic openers when the speed is 100 mm/s, the value is 9.08%. The width of the ditch of the three bionic openers is smaller than that of the traditional opener. Bionic corrugated opener can improve the ditch height and reduce the ditch width,the corrugated structure creates a gap between the surface of the core and the particles, reducing the number of contact and contact area of the particles. The number of contact particles of the three bionic openers is smaller than that of the traditional opener. The bionic composite opener has the smallest force field and the soil disturbance caused by the core share surface is small, the soil is evenly distributed along the core surface. The discrete element simulation shows that the bionic opener can effectively reduce the ditching resistance and improve the quality of ditching, which provides a theoretical basis for subsequent research and optimization.
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