Knowledge base
Machinery
Agricultural machinery and equipment — from tractors and tillage tools to seeding, crop protection, harvest, and precision-farming technology.
26 entries · every entry is sourced and dated
Entries describe categories of equipment and their roles. Specific machine selection depends on scale, crop, terrain, and local conditions.
- Agricultural machinery
Agricultural Drone
An agricultural drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with cameras, sensors, or spray systems, used to scout crops from above, capture imagery for mapping and stress detection, or apply crop-protection products to targeted areas.
- Agricultural machinery
Baler
A baler gathers cut, dried forage or crop residue from the ground and compresses it into round or rectangular bales bound with twine, net wrap, or wire, producing a compact, storable, and transportable form for feeding or bedding.
- Agricultural machinery
Chisel Plough
A chisel plough is a primary tillage implement fitted with curved, narrow shanks that fracture and loosen the soil to depth without inverting it, leaving more crop residue on the surface than a moldboard plough.
- Agricultural machinery
Combine Harvester
A combine harvester is a self-propelled machine that cuts, threshes, separates, and cleans grain and oilseed crops in a single pass, combining operations that were once performed by several separate machines.
- Agricultural machinery
Cultivator
A cultivator uses rows of shanks, tines, or sweeps to stir and loosen shallow soil, used either as a secondary tillage tool for seedbed preparation or, mounted between crop rows, for mechanical weed control during the growing season.
- Agricultural machinery
Disc Harrow
A disc harrow uses rows of angled, concave discs to cut, mix, and break up soil and residue, commonly used as a secondary tillage tool to prepare a finer seedbed or to incorporate crop residue and previous tillage clods.
- Agricultural machinery
Fertilizer Spreader
A fertilizer spreader distributes solid granular or pelleted fertilizer across a field, typically by broadcasting it in a fan pattern from spinning discs or metering it through a boom, to supply nutrients to a growing or planned crop.
- Agricultural machinery
Forage Harvester
A forage harvester cuts standing forage crops such as grass, legumes, or whole-plant maize and chops them into small pieces for silage, blowing the chopped material into a following trailer or truck in a single continuous pass.
- Agricultural machinery
GPS Guidance System
A GPS guidance system uses satellite positioning to steer or assist steering of farm machinery along precise, repeatable paths, reducing overlap and skips during field operations and enabling other precision-agriculture functions such as section control.
- Agricultural machinery
Grain Auger
A grain auger is a portable screw conveyor that moves free-flowing grain along an inclined tube, used to load and unload storage bins, trucks, and carts during and after harvest.
- Agricultural machinery
Grain Dryer
A grain dryer reduces the moisture content of freshly harvested grain to a level safe for storage, using heated or ambient air passed through the grain mass, protecting it from mould, insect damage, and spoilage.
- Agricultural machinery
Manure Spreader
A manure spreader is a trailed or mounted machine that meters and broadcasts solid or semi-solid manure across a field, recycling nutrients and organic matter back into the soil.
- Agricultural machinery
Moldboard Plough
The moldboard plough is a primary tillage implement that cuts, lifts, and inverts a slice of soil, burying surface residue and weeds while creating a loosened seedbed layer, historically the dominant tool for preparing land ahead of planting.
- Agricultural machinery
Planter
A planter is a precision seeding implement that singulates individual seeds and places them at controlled spacing and depth in rows, used mainly for wider-spaced row crops such as maize, soybean, and sugar beet.
- Agricultural machinery
Potato Harvester
A potato harvester lifts potato tubers from the soil ridge, separates them from soil, haulm, stones, and clods on a series of conveyors, and collects the cleaned crop into a bunker or trailer.
- Agricultural machinery
Power Harrow
A power harrow is a tractor-driven secondary tillage implement whose vertically mounted tines rotate on vertical axes to break down clods and prepare a level, fine seedbed without inverting the soil profile.
- Agricultural machinery
Rotary Mower
A rotary mower cuts standing forage or vegetation using fast-spinning blades or discs mounted horizontally, offering a robust, relatively simple cutting method widely used for hay, pasture topping, and roadside or field-margin mowing.
- Agricultural machinery
Seed Drill
A seed drill places seed at a controlled depth and spacing in rows, opening a furrow, metering seed into it, and covering it in one pass, giving more even establishment than broadcasting seed by hand or machine.
- Agricultural machinery
Self-Propelled Sprayer
A self-propelled sprayer is a machine with its own engine, a large tank, and a wide boom that applies liquid crop-protection products and foliar nutrients across broadacre crops at speed and with a high clearance over the canopy.
- Agricultural machinery
Sprayer
An agricultural sprayer applies liquid crop-protection products or foliar nutrients to fields, atomising a tank mixture into droplets and distributing it evenly across a target area through a boom or targeted nozzles.
- Agricultural machinery
Subsoiler
A subsoiler uses one or more narrow shanks drawn well below normal tillage depth to shatter compacted subsurface soil layers, improving root penetration, water infiltration, and drainage without inverting the topsoil.
- Agricultural machinery
Sugarcane Harvester
A sugarcane harvester is a self-propelled machine that cuts standing cane at the base, removes tops and leafy trash, cuts the stalks into short billets, and loads the clean cane into an accompanying haul-out for transport to the mill.
- Agricultural machinery
Thresher
A thresher separates grain from the stalks, heads, or pods of a harvested crop, typically also winnowing away chaff and light debris, and is used as a stand-alone machine where cutting and threshing are not combined in a single harvester pass.
- Agricultural machinery
Tractor
The tractor is the primary power source on most farms, supplying drawbar pull, hydraulic power, and power take-off (PTO) drive to pull and operate implements for tillage, seeding, spraying, harvesting, and haulage.
- Agricultural machinery
Transplanter
A transplanter mechanically sets young seedlings, raised beforehand in a nursery or trays, into the field at a set spacing and depth, replacing manual transplanting for crops such as rice and many vegetables.
- Agricultural machinery
Variable-Rate Applicator
A variable-rate applicator adjusts the application rate of an input — such as seed, fertilizer, lime, or pesticide — automatically across a field, following a prescription map or real-time sensor data rather than applying a single uniform rate.