Chapter 6: Machinery evolution for conservation agriculture
Files
Download Full Text
Description
Australia lies among the top five countries worldwide to adopt en masse conservation agriculture (CA) farming systems (Kassam et al. 2015). No-till (NT) practice is still growing having reached 80-90% of crop area in many regions (Llewellyn et al. 2012, see also Chapter 2). This unprecedented rate of change has led to a rapid evolution in machinery for CA systems. This chapter reviews the evolution of machinery for CA systems witnessed in Australia over the last 30 years. It is structured around 4 key groups of machinery, namely tractors as the power source, crop seeding/planting, spraying and harvesting machinery covering the key phases a crop establishment, protection and grain harvesting. A final section also covers the topic of controlled traffic farming (CTF) and associated machinery adaptations, as CTF plays an increasing role in Australian cropping, occupying an estimated 22% (6.75 M ha) of grain cropping area (ABS 2017).
Publication Title
Australian Agriculture in 2020: From conservation to automation
ISBN
ISBN – 13: 978-0-6485819-0-1
Publication Date
1-2019
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publisher
Published on behalf of Agronomy Australia by Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation, Charles Sturt University
City
Wagga Wagga
Disciplines
Agricultural Science | Agronomy and Crop Sciences | Natural Resources and Conservation | Natural Resources Management and Policy
Recommended Citation
Jack Desbiolles, Chris Saunders, James Barr, Glen Riethmuller, Gary Northover, Jeff Tullberg and Diogenes Antille (2019). Chapter 6: Machinery evolution for conservation agriculture. In (Eds J Pratley and J Kirkegaard) “Australian Agriculture in 2020: From Conservation to Automation” pp 81-105 (Agronomy Australia and Charles Sturt University: Wagga Wagga).
