Farm Machinery Management is the section of farm management that deals with the optimization of the equipment phases of agriculture production. It is concerned with the efficient selection, operation, repair, and replacement if machinery.
As North American agriculture has developed, it has become increasingly dependent on mechanization. With the technology available today, one farm provides the foods and fiber needs of 128 people. Additionally, these farms exported more than 25% of the total value of the production of corn, wheat, and soybeans. Such performance would be impossible without augmenting human strength and energy with farm machinery.
The costs of owning and operating machinery are often exceeded only by the cost of land use. A typical Corn Belt grain farm, 400 ha (1000 a), can have machinery (no labor) costs of $ 200/ha ($ 80/a). Machinery investment costs can be $ 1200/ha ($500/a). Potentially, there is opportunity to improve farm profits by reducing machinery costs.
The measure of the worth of a management decision is assumed to be dollar profit. While it is recognized that many farmers use personal Preference, comfort, and convenience as deciding factors in machinery management, such emotional response are ignored in this presentation unless there is an apparent economic benefit. The philosophy adopted is that a farm is a factory that markets several products, and the management goal is to maximize profits. The machines on the farm are merely tools of production and have coots that subtract from gross income. But present and future concerns for the environment and for conservation of natural resources cause activity for farm machinery that may not be strictly economic. In 1997 more than 13. 000, 000 ha (33,000,000a) were enrolled is U.S government conversation Programs. |
