Machines with Good Intent

Feb 2, 2015
5 min read

By Jose Angelo Lorenzo Gomos

In the middle of a sunny morning, ivory clouds hover in the clear azure sky. The fields on the highlands emit an emerald glow as the grass bend towards the soft wind’s direction. The mountain ranges on the horizon surround the fields like towering walls protecting a cathedral, their pinnacles piercing the heavens above. The birds atop the branches on the mango trees (aligned in rows on the slopes of the field) sing in a chorus of symphonic tweets and harmonious chirps. The song becomes the hymn of the sunny mid-morning.

Until such time, the song is broken as the sound of the revving engine and rattling metals ensue. In the middle of the field, a tractor – a large vehicular machine with enormous circular rubber tires – is operated. Attached to its rear are steel ploughs designed to carve the earth and furrow the field. Once it roars to life, the tractor, driven by a licensed farmer, wheels around the field, chopping grasses and shortening their length, marking the soil with the ploughs it carries, digging the earth to prepare for a crop plantation. In the sunny mid-morning, as the clouds hover in the sky, as the mountains stand on the horizon, and as the birds flutter and flew from the mango trees’ branches, the field is being used for agriculture with the aid of an agricultural machine.

Agricultural machinery can be considered as the Holy Grail in the farming sector. It involves the utilization of modern mechanization to alleviate farming methods. Agricultural machines aid the farmers in many ways possible. They help farmers prepare a field or a plot of land for plantation, harvest the produce, and manufacture these farming products to satisfy the people’s basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. Machines save time and labor as well as hasten agricultural production and minimize inconvenience, challenges, and difficulties farmers usually face when doing manual operation.

Since mankind’s earliest civilizations, agriculture has always been the chief source of livelihood. But during the initial years when technology seemed to be underdeveloped, man relied on his own strengths and efforts to cultivate the land. However, when man discovered the use of animals and livestock, he managed to continue farming through the help of these beasts. The fields were irrigated and ploughed with the power of horses, cows, and other animals that can sustain in living in the farm.

As global technology constantly changes, agriculture needs to adapt; thus, the development of agricultural machinery. Machines for agriculture were first used in the late 19th century when steam-powered engines were introduced. Subsequently, man figured ways to perpetuate agriculture through modern machines and revolutionized technology. This made agriculture and farming methods prosper throughout the ages.

Machines, Tools, and Equipments for Agriculture

In the present, strategies in agriculture heavily rely on a wide variety of mechanized tools and machines to increase the farm’s efficiency and productivity. Besides tractors, helicopters and airplanes are used on expansive arable farmlands to spray fertilizers to the crops or to shower water on them when drought recurs in its annual season.

The most commonly used machines are: tractors which consist of wheels, two brake pedals and pull sledges, and can move effectively on the field even in flooded areas; walking tractors which compose of a single axle and is made operational by handles and median motor power (although a walking tractor can be used on farmlands, it is most preferably used in ornamental and horticultural agriculture such as gardens); and lastly, combines which cut the plants’ or crops’ mature grain.

Other tools and equipments used in farming include: power tiller; rotary shredders and brushcutters for land reclamation and development; subsoilers, mouldboard ploughs, disc ploughs for the primary tillage; offset disc harrows, rotary cultivators/rotavators, ridgers/bed formers for the secondary tillage; conventional and pneumatic seed drills for sowing and planting; hand-held and knapsack sprayers for chemical spraying; and mountain granular fertilizer spreaders for chemical fertilizing. Additional purposes of these tools encompass modern land cultivation, pest control, harvesting, transportation, storage, pre-marketing processing, drainage, irrigation and erosion control, and water conservation.

Due to the augmenting demand of these tools and machines, several business enterprises have been established to cater to the needs of modern agricultural strategies. Notable farming manufacturers exist worldwide such as the AGCO Corporation and John Deere in the USA, Kubota in Japan, Claas in Germany, CNH - an Italian company registered in Netherlands, and Mahindra & Mahindra in India. In the Philippines, a number of manufacturing companies sell agricultural machineries.

One of these is the VA Farm Tractor Industrial Corporation. Located in Osmeña Extension St., Cagayan de Oro City, the corporation gains the reputation as a successful supplier for tractor parts to small time farmers and entrepreneurs. Its former name was Farm Tractor Parts Co., and was located in Gen. Capistrano St. after its establishment in 1977. Today, the company sells products such as bearings, seals, filters, roller chains, belts, heavy equipments, tractor parts, and customized engineering fabricated products.

Agricultural Machinery for National Development and Global Competition

On November 2014, an agri-machinery show and exhibit was held at Limketkai Center in Cagayan de Oro City. With its theme, “Corn Farming in the ASEAN Integration: Maximizing Opportunities,” the event was in line with the 10th Philippine National Corn Congress (PNCC) to magnify farm mechanization on corn farming seeds in the local area. Spearheaded by the Department of Agriculture through the Department of Agrarian Reform in Northern Mindanao, it aims to educate the people about the effectiveness and significance of agri-machinery in the farming areas in the region. Seminars and demonstrations on machines and equipments such as the Compact Corn Mill and the Cassava Digger were given.

According to Engr. Rex L. Bingabing, Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Postharvest Development and Mechanization (PhilMech), the modernization of agricultural machines is of utmost importance in an agriculturally rich country such as the Philippines.

“In order to improve global competitiveness in the corn sector in preparation for the ASEAN Integration, we must be able to increase farm productivity by adapting modernization in farm machineries to assure efficiency and to boost our farmer’s income,” he remarked during the program.

In addition, the Philippine government is working on ways to improve agri-machinery in the country. One example is the half amount of the Php 2.2 billion budget allocated by the Department of Agriculture to be devoted to agri-machineries and post-harvest facilities to ascertain the production of agricultural goods such as corn.

Another support by the Philippine government is manifested by the Republic Act No. 8435. Otherwise known as the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act of 1997, it serves as one of the core programs of the government to cease the vicious cycle of poverty, to sustain food security, to rationalize the use of resources, to surpass global competitiveness, and to stabilize the environment and promote the nation’s development. This act implements the improvement of modernized technologies used in farming to enhance its profitability and sufficiency in staple foods like rice and white corn. This act also mandates the State to empower the agriculture and fisheries sectors in the country for their development and sustainability.

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Months have passed since the day the tractor ploughed the field. It is another day and the sun sets high yet again on a mid-morning. The grass surrounding the field glows like a carpet of emerald threads woven across a wide plain. The mountains still stand like walls of a cathedral. The birds still sing their song upon the mango trees’ branches. When another vehicular engine starts, the birds stay on their places for they now know the machine’s good intent. As that machine once again wheels around the field, it begins to function with a new purpose – to harvest the crops’ abundant yield for the consumption of many.