MECHANISATION OF FARMING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 111, 6 November 1935, Page 18

MECHANISATION OF FARMING

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PROGRESS

A CENTURY ago modern agriculture was born. Before then the industry struggled along with the same means and methods that were in vogue when man first tilled the land. Inventions are the products of need, but behind the great inventors of last century there was something more than need which prompted them to try and assist the basic industry of the world. They realised that if the rest of civilisation became modern while agriculture remained in the slough of inefficiency, the economic results would be disastrous Thus, the mechanisation of farming has progressed rapidly, particularly during the last 20 or 30 years.

Upon, reflection it appears that in the ploughing and tilling of the soil and the sowing of seed there has undoubtedly been a vast improvement in methods and machinery, resulting, with the co-operation of science, in increased yield and an improved'product. Probably, however, the most interesting story of progress lies around the harvesting methods. Up to 1831 grain was harvested with the sickle or the scythe, but in that year a young American farmer boy invented the world's first successful reaper. His invention opened the door not only for the new era of agriculture in which machine power was soon to replace man power on the farms, but also for the golden age of industrial progress of the last century. He assured the world of betterquality food and minimised the risk of famine, which was no small consideration when harvesting was a long-drawn-out matter controlled to a very large extent by the caprice of the weather. THE REAPER'S PROGENY. The reaper was the first of the implements by which mechanised power was brought to the aid of agriculture. It appeared suddenly before an unexpectant world. Within twenty years after its birth it had become a proved mechanism, and in thirty years its purpose had been accepted everywhere and its usefulness was hailed by farmers and statesmen. Then, after some years of development, its progeny began to appear on the scene;\the selfrake reaper, the harvester, the wire binder, and the twine binder. Up to the advent of the reaper, the peak load of the agricultural cycle was in the harvest: It was always easier, even with the crudest of tillage implements, to make a crop than to gather it. The invention of the reaper, replacing the sickle, the scythe, and the cradle, shifted the incidence of time and labour to the turning of the soil. When the invention of the modern plough solved that problem, the peak load of farm labour rested on thrashing. The early horse-power thrasher then became as inadequate for its share of crop production as the primitive plough had proved when the reaper appeared. Inventive genius, therefore, directed its attention to the final phase of crop production and evolved more efficient types of stationary steam-power thrashers. It appears that the solution of one farm problem inevitably makes necessary the solution of other related needs, and therein is the answer to the steady progress in the farm-implement industry. The harvester-thrasher is the reaper's latest descendant in the direct line. It is masterful because it is the dominant factor in harvesting. The first harvester-thrasher had a reciprocating knife, guards in front of the blade, a reel, a platform, a main wheel, the principle of cutting to one side of the implement,. and the outside divider. The harvester-thrasher of today actuates its moving parts not by the main wheel drive from the ground but by a power take-off from the tractor or by a separate engine. This implement, which cuts the grain, thrashes it, and bags it, :s probably the most spectacular achlavement of power farming. Where veather is changeable, research and experience have proved that the windrov; method has many advantages over th- old method of stooking. THE TJRACTOR. In lesf. than 60 years after the first reaper sippeared, the great minds of the world began to ask themselves why machinery could not be similarly applied to those tasks which were beyond the tasks of muscular physique. They seized upon the principle of internal combust: on, added it to the stock in trade of implement practice, and produced the tractor. Thus by the time of the reaper's eightieth birthday its progeny were growing in number as well as in efficiency. Machines were becoming purposeful. One hundred years ago, one man with a hoe and scythe could tend one farm acre, or, perhaps a two-acre patch. Today, with the triumphs of human ingenuity, he can accomplish single-handed at least a hundred acres of production; Farm power, however, is no longer a mere substitute for the farmer's beasts of burden. It has enjoyed its own transition and has become power farming. The final application of mechanical power to farm needs appeared when power was made an integral, rather than an incidental, part of the farm operation. A great deal of attention is now focused on the motive power for the modern farm machines, and the subject of horses versus tractors has provoked much controversy. Every year that passes sees tractors gradually superseding horses for farm work, and consideration of this matter will show that this is the natural turn of events in view of the economy of the modern tractor, and the fact that time and weather demand a thorough and frequent cultivation and in many cases a speedy harvest. Thus it is evident that the tractor by sheer merit has gained the place it holds at present in New Zealand. The story of the tractor properly begins with the discovery of steam. The first portable steam-power plant was built in about 1849. A year later a prominent writer of the day commented: "The time must be at hand when every thrifty farmer will; have such an engine of his own, and I chopping straw, turning grindstone, cutting wood, churning, thrashing, etc.. will cease to be a manual and become

a mechanical operation. . . . This engine will be running on wheels and driving a scythe before it or drawing a plough behind it within five years." For many years the application of steam-power to farm problems went no further than thrashing, and the adaptation of power to ploughing was not attempted until near the end of last century. Even then the engines with which ploughing was first attempted were power plants devised for thrashing, movable only for purposes of transpprtation from field to field. The solution of the problem of the tractor lay in the internal combustion engine of 1876. When . the patents for this ran out in 1890 so many companies in different parts of the world leaped into motor activity that by 1899 there were over one. hundred kinds of four-cycle engines on the market.

What is supposed to be the first manufactured petrol tractor dates from 1895, but during the next several years various individuals sought more or less ineffectually to build farm tractors. These efforts were directed to produce belt-power machines rather than tractors for ploughing and other mobile work.

CUMBERSOME BUT SERVICEABLE.

The rapidly-developing motor-car industry gave the impetus required to produce a suitable tractor. In 1901 two Americans constructed a cumbersome two-cylinder, oil-cooled, slow-

speed two-cycle tractor which astonished all concerned by its ability to operate. During the next year fifteen more tractors of this type were constructed. That these early machines, crude though they may have been, were sound and serviceable is indicated by the fact that in 1920 half of them were still in the hands of farmer-owners and still in operation.

The development of .the tractor has probably been more rapid than thatl

of any other mechanical farm implement. The large cumbersome model of the early days has given way to a comparatively small but powerful machine capable of an amount of work which 100 years ago would simply have been a farmer's dream. Among the most recent improvements to the modern tractor are the low-pressure pneumatic tire and the Diesel principle for motive power. Hitherto, what

might be termed the bugbear of the Diesel, that of the laborious method of starting, either with blowlamp or auxiliary engine, has been entirely overcome in the latest tractor, ih which the success of its starting lies in its simplicity. No blowlamp, no sidemounted engine, but by simply turning a switch the compression ratio is reduced from 15 to 1 to 5 to 1, and* a set of spark plugs and magneto ignition are brought into play and the tractor can be cranked" and started on petrol as easily as any other machine. When, however, it has reached 800 r.p.m. it automatically switches over to full Diesel operation and the ignition and spark plugs are shut off from commission and the compression ratio is increased again to 15 to 1.

Judging by the progress of farm mechanisation of the last century it is reasonable to assume that during the next there will be even greater and better improvements.

A page from the diary of the lat : Rev. J. G. Butler, referring to the first, plough used in New Zealand.