Farm Machinery

AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT – FARM MACHINERY

Nigerian traditional agriculture is dominated by what is termed “hoe and cutlass” farming.

This has over the years characterized the low output of farm produce, despite the over 50 million farmers in the country. It has now become imperative to adopt an appropriate level of engine-power agricultural mechanization technology, necessary and sufficient to modernize, energize, and revitalize the industry.

Image Source: www.davidbrowntractorclub.com

Nigeria is said to have 20,000 to 30,000 functional tractor units. But the nation still requires about 1.5 million tractor units to fully boost its food production[1]. This projection is against the backdrop of FAO recommendation of factorization intensity of 1.5 hp (1.125 kW) per hectare. FAO study further showed that only 1% of farm power is supplied by mechanical means in sub-Saharan Africa, 10% by animal draught power while the remaining 89% is from human labor.

Animal powers are still widely used as a major source of power in many parts of the country. Land preparation, weed management, crop threshing, and transport are undertaken using animal power. Animals such as donkey, cow, mule, camels, horse, etc.

The different types of Machineries are described as thus;

TRACTOR

This is the most important farm machinery.  It is a farm vehicle that provides the power and traction to mechanize agricultural tasks, especially (and originally) tillage, but nowadays a great variety of tasks can be achieved with the tractor. The farm tractor is used for pulling or pushing agricultural machinery, or trailers, for plowing, tilling, disking, harrowing, planting, and similar tasks. The tractor uses a power take-off shaft (PTO) to provide rotary power to machinery that may be stationary or pulled.

Courtesy: https://www.products.tngcn.com

BULLDOZERS

This is a track-type tractor with a blade attached in the front and a rope-winch behind. Bulldozers are very powerful tractors and have excellent ground-hold, as their main tasks are to push or drag. It is used for clearing of thick vegetation and for leveling of the land area meant for cropping. There are different forms of it but perform basically the same function.

Source: https://www.machineryzone.eu

The tractor is used to power the following implements to perform different activities.

There are different designs of this implement but they all perform

A plow is a tool (or machine) used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history and represents one of the major advances in agriculture.

The primary purpose of plowing is to turn over the upper layer of the soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface, while burying weeds, the remains of previous crops, and both crop and weed seeds, allowing them to break down. It also aerates the soil, allows it to hold moisture better, and provides a seed-free medium for planting an alternate crop.

There are different designs of the implements and types. There are also ploughs which are animal powered.

Source: https://www.diytrade.com

                     Disc plough

                                 Mould board plough

                            source: https://www.alibaba.com

Source: https://www.alibaba.com

        Animal driven plough                 

HARROW

This is an implement for breaking up and smoothing out the surface of the plowed field. Harrowing is often carried out on fields to follow the rough finish left by plowing operations. The purpose of this harrowing is generally to break up clods (lumps of soil) and to provide a finer finish, a good soil structure that is suitable for seedbed use. Such coarser harrowing may also be used to remove weeds and to cover seed after sowing.

There are different types of harrows: disc harrow, tine harrow, chain harrow, and chain disk harrows. Harrows were originally drawn by draft animals, such as horses, mules, or oxen. In modern practice, they are almost always tractor-mounted implements, either trailed after the tractor by a drawbar or mounted on the three-point hitch[2].

Source: https://www.alibaba.com

         DISC HARROW

                                               

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

              SPRING TOOTH HARROW

                        CHAIN HARROW

CULTIVATORS

A cultivator is any of several types of farm implement used for secondary tillage.

Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weeds—controlled disturbance of the topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow, which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds.

Cultivators are usually either self-propelled or drawn as an attachment behind either a two-wheel tractor or four-wheel tractor. For two-wheel tractors, they are usually rigidly fixed and powered via couplings to the tractors’ transmission[3].

Source: www.made-from-india.com

 

                        Cultivator usage

This is an implement used for gathering and heaping up the loose soil (prepare ridges) for planting seeds in rows. It consists essentially of two mold-boards placed side by side, flaring slightly in front and hinged to a wheel at the rear. There are different types of the ridger

source:www.bombayharbor.com

                         

                                                                                

                                                                                     source: www.agrional.com

A manure spreader or muck spreader or honey wagon is an agricultural machine used to distribute manure over a field as a fertilizer. A typical (modern) manure spreader consists of a trailer towed behind a tractor with a rotating mechanism driven by the tractor’s power take-off (PTO). It could spread all types of waste including poultry litter, compost, and dry industrial wastes. There are different models of the equipment.

source: www.disc-blade.com

www.foxbridgemachinery.co.uk

A planter is an agricultural farm implement towed behind a tractor, used for sowing crops through a field. It is connected to the tractor with a draw-bar or a three-point hitch. Planters lay the seed down in a precise manner along rows. Seeds are distributed through devices called row units. The row units are spaced evenly along with the planter. 9Planters vary greatly in size, from 2 rows to 48, with the biggest in the world being the 48-row John Deere DB120[4]. The space between the row units also varies greatly.

There are several designs of a planter depending on the size of the seeds and planting requirement.

  source: www.radzim.co.zw

                                              

    source: www.alibaba.com

In agriculture, a sprayer is a piece of equipment that sprays nozzles to apply herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers to agricultural crops. Sprayers range in size from man-portable units (typical backpacks with spray guns) to trailed sprayers that are connected to a tractor, to self-propelled units similar to tractors, with boom mounts of 60–151 feet in length. There are different types of sprayers, depending on the scale of production and the material to spray. They can also be employed in irrigation exercises to serve as artificial rain simulation and enhance crop growth during the dry season.

The components of a knapsack sprayer are similar to a broadacre boom sprayer. Knapsack sprayers are available in many different configurations they all comprise of the same basic components

Knapsack sprayer source:www.wellerhire.co.uk

 

Mounted boom sprayer source: www.technikboerse.com