Managing Machinery in the Biological Farm System

C. Alan Rotz

Traditional machinery management has focused on the interactions between field equipment, soil, and weather. A machinery management weakness has been inadequate consideration of the biological processes of the farm system.

rom the time agricultural machinery came into common use on farms in the middle of the past century, agricultural engineers have been developing more efficient practices for using that equipment. In our profession, this has become known as agricultural machinery management or, more simply, machinery management. The goal in machinery management is to develop the smallest or lowest cost set of equipment that can get the job done in a timely manner. The most economical system is sought whether the job is tilling, planting, harvesting, or applying manure. When a set of machinery is sized too small for a given field operation, there are times usually under poor weather conditions when the job does not get finished on time. With a delay in planting or harvest, the producer can experience a substantial economic loss. Therefore, producers tend to buy equipment larger than they need to be sure they have the capacity they need. With oversized equipment, the producer invests more than is necessary, which also increases production costs and reduces farm profit. To assist in the selection of field machinery, engineers have developed tools for helping select the best set of machines for a given

operation or a whole-farm system that minimizes production costs or maximizes profit.

Traditional machinery management Traditional machinery management has focused on the interactions between field equipment, soil, and weather. Relationships have been developed to study the efficiency and capacity of operations and the time available for fieldwork under given soil and weather conditions. By knowing the functional capacity required for an operation and the time available, the size of machines needed to complete the work can be determined. Predicting the time available has proved the greatest challenge. Available time can vary considerably from one year to the next depending upon weather conditions. In years when there is much rain, operations can experience long delays with only a short period of time remaining to get the work done. This weather influence has been considered by determining the probability of suitable weather. Common practice is to select equipment that can get the work done in a reasonable amount of time in eight out of ten years. If the equipment system is designed with a capacity that is always able to complete

the job, too much money is invested in the equipment. What this really means is that during 20 percent of the years when weather conditions are not favorable, the producer and equipment operators work extra long hours or make other arrangements to complete the work. Determining the probability of suitable weather for field operations has been one of the more difficult tasks in machinery management. For some locations, records have been gathered for many years to record the days available for fieldwork during various periods of the year. This information is useful, but it is specific to the location and soil conditions monitored. A more general approach has been to use models to track soil conditions through many years of weather to determine the probability of suitable weather in a given period. Another important aspect of traditional machinery management is determining and minimizing production costs. Relationships for estimating the costs of depreciation, interest, maintenance, repairs, fuel use, labor use, etc. have been determined to ascertain a total cost for owning and operating equipment. These relationships have changed over the years as equipment sizes have increased, and efficiency and

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reliability have improved. When more than one equipment set can accomplish the needed work in a timely manner, the normal practice is to select the set with the lowest total cost. Over the past 50 years, the important relationships in machinery management have been published in the Machinery Management Standards by ASABE. These standards are reviewed and revised as new information comes available.

The biological system A weakness in traditional machinery management has been an inadequate consideration of the biological processes of the farm system. Machinery management can have a large impact on crop growth and the losses and quality changes that occur during and following crop harvest. When the machinery used is too small, planting can be delayed which affects crop growth and development throughout the remainder of the growing season. This normally means a reduction in crop value, but under the right conditions a delay may actually improve crop yield and/or quality. The timeliness of harvest is also important. Most crops reach an optimum yield and quality for harvest that lasts a relatively short time. When harvest occurs too soon or is delayed beyond this optimum window, the value of the crop decreases. Crop value can be difficult to quantify. When crops are harvested for sale to off-farm markets, the market value can be used. This market value is controlled by many factors though, so this value may not be stable, particularly from one year to the next. When crops are produced and used as feed on the farm, their value becomes even more difficult to quantify. In this case, crop value ultimately depends upon the intake and performance of the animals consuming the feed. Perhaps the most difficult application for traditional machinery management has been in selecting equipment

Machinery and other farm components can be managed more effectively by considering all of the major farm processes and their interactions using a tool such as the Integrated Farm System Model.

for forage harvest. This difficulty occurs because of the many biological processes involved and their interaction with weather and other harvest conditions. Forage crops often move through an optimum yield and quality for harvest in just a few days. During harvest, crop yield and quality are lost through plant respiration. If rain occurs during field curing, considerable loss can occur due to rain damage and an increase in microbial activity on the crop following the rain. When additional operations, such as tedding and raking, are used to help speed field drying to reduce these losses, the added operations cause loss, further reducing both yield and quality. Selecting an optimum machinery set with all of these factors considered is difficult.

Integrating machinery management with the biological system Machinery management for the future must give more attention to the influence of equipment on the biological system. This is best accomplished through whole-farm simulation. By simulating all of the major biological processes on the farm and their interac-

tion with equipment, an optimum system can be obtained that considers all production costs, the ultimate value of the end product produced, and thus, a more accurate optimization of farm profit. A software tool that currently provides this type of analysis is the Integrated Farm System Model. This tool can simulate crop, dairy, or beef production systems over many years of weather to determine the performance and economics of the farm. By testing various sets of equipment on the farm, a set can be selected that maximizes farm profit. This software and further documentation of the model are readily available from the USDA-ARS, http://ars.usda.gov/naa/pswmru. This tool provides a next step in the evolution of machinery management. As our food, fiber, and bioenergy production systems of the future are refined, the development of tools that better represent the biological processes of the farm and their interaction with management must continue as well.
ASABE Fellow C. Alan Rotz is an agricultural engineer, USDA-ARS; 814-865-2049, Al.Rotz@ars.usda.gov.

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April 2007