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Technology ArticleGreat Agricultural Machinery Agricultural machinery is one of the most revolutionary and impactful applications of modern technology. The truly elemental human need for food has often driven the development of technology and machines. Over the last 250 years, advances in farm equipment have transformed the way people are employed and produce their food worldwide. The basic technology of agricultural machines has changed little in the last century. Though modern harvesters and planters may do a better job or be slightly tweaked from their predecessors, the US$250,000 combine of today still cuts, threshes, and separates grain in essentially the same way it has always been done. However, technology is changing the way that humans operate the machines, as computer monitoring systems, GPS locators, and self-steer programs allow the most advanced tractors and implements to be more precise and less wasteful in the use of fuel, seed, or fertilizer. In the foreseeable future, some agricultural machines will be capable of driving themselves, using GPS maps and electronic sensors. Even more esoteric are the new areas of nanotechnology and genetic engineering, where submicroscopic devices and biological processes, respectively, are being used as machines to perform agricultural tasks in unusual new ways. Agriculture may be one of the oldest professions, but the development and use of machinery has made the job title of farmer a rarity. Instead of every person having to work to provide food for themselves, less than 2% of the U.S. population today works in agriculture, yet that 2% provides considerably more food than the other 98% can eat. It is estimated that at the turn of the 20th century, one farmer in the U.S. could feed 25 people, where today, that ratio is 1:130 (in a modern grain farm, a single farmer can produce cereal to feed over a thousand people). With continuing advances in agricultural machinery, the role of the farmer will become increasingly specialized and rare. Wikipedia Disclaimer Above information is from wikipedia and is freely distributed under the GNU license Also See: All Articles |