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Agricultural technology developed more rapidly in the 20th century than in all previous history. Though the most important developments during the first half of the century took place in the industrial countries, especially the United States, the picture changed somewhat after the 1950s. With the coming of independence, former colonies in Africa and Asia initiated large-scale efforts to improve their agriculture. In many cases they used considerable ingenuity in adapting Western methods to their own climates, soils, and crops (see also agricultural technology).
Developments in power: the internal-combustion engine
The internal-combustion engine brought major changes to agriculture in most of the world. In advanced regions it soon became the chief power source for the farm.
The tractor
The first applications to agriculture of the four-stroke-cycle gasoline engine were as stationary engines, at first in Germany, later elsewhere. By the 1890s stationary engines were mounted on wheels to make them portable, and soon a drive was added to make them self-propelled. The first successful gasoline tractor was built in the United States in 1892. Within a few years several companies were manufacturing tractors in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The number of tractors in the more developed countries increased dramatically during the 20th century, especially in the United States: in 1907 some 600 tractors were in use, but the figure had grown to almost 3,400,000 by 1950.
Major changes in tractor design throughout the 20th century produced a much more efficient and useful machine. Principal among these were the power takeoff, introduced in 1918, in which power from the tractor’s engine could be transmitted directly to an implement through the use of a special shaft; the all-purpose, or tricycle-type, tractor (1924), which enabled farmers to cultivate planted crops mechanically; rubber tires (1932), which facilitated faster operating speeds; and the switch to four-wheel drives and diesel power in the 1950s and 1960s, which greatly increased the tractor’s pulling power. The last innovations have led to the development of enormous tractors—usually having double tires on each wheel and enclosed, air-conditioned cabs—that can pull several gangs of plows.
Unit machinery
After World War II, there was an increase in the use of self-propelled machines in which the motive power and the equipment for performing a particular task formed one unit. Though the grain combine is the most important of these single-unit machines, self-propelled units are also in use for spraying, picking cotton, baling hay, picking corn, and harvesting tomatoes, lettuce, sugar beets, and many other crops. These machines are faster, easier to operate, and above all, have lower labor requirements than those that are powered by a separate tractor.
Grain combine
The first successful grain combine, a machine that cuts ripe grain and separates the kernels from the straw, was built in the United States in 1836. Lack of an adequate power unit and the tendency of combined grain to spoil because of excessive moisture limited its development, however. Large combines, powered by as many as 40 horses, were used in California in the latter part of the 19th century. Steam engines replaced horses on some units as a power source, but, about 1912, the gasoline engine began to replace both horses and steam for pulling the combine and operating its mechanism. A one-man combine, powered by a two-plow-sized tractor (i.e., one large enough to pull two plows), was developed in 1935. This was followed by a self-propelled machine in 1938.
Mechanized equipment for corn
Corn (maize), the most important single crop in the United States and extremely important in many other countries, is grown commercially with the aid of equipment operated by tractors or by internal-combustion engines mounted on the machines. Maize pickers came into use in the U.S. Corn Belt after World War I and were even more widely adopted after World War II. These pickers vary in complexity from the snapper-type harvester, which removes the ears from the stalks but does not husk them, to the picker-sheller, which not only removes the husk but shells the grain from the ear. The latter is often used in conjunction with dryers. Modern machines can harvest as many as 12 rows of corn at a time.
Mechanized equipment for cotton
Mechanization has also reduced substantially the labor needed to grow cotton. Equipment includes tractor, two-row stalk-cutter, disk (to shred the stalks), bedder (to shape the soil into ridges or seedbeds), planter, cultivator, sprayer, and harvester. Cotton fiber is harvested by a stripper-type harvester, developed in the 1920s, or by a picker. The stripper strips the entire plant of both open and unopened bolls and collects many leaves and stems. Though a successful cotton picker that removed the seed cotton from the open bolls and left the burrs on the plant was invented in 1927, it did not come into use until after World War II. Strippers are used mostly in dry regions, while pickers are employed in humid, warm areas. The pickers are either single-row machines mounted on tractors or two-row self-propelled machines.
Tomato-harvesting equipment
The self-propelled mechanical tomato harvester, developed in the early 1960s by engineers working in cooperation with plant breeders, handles virtually all packing tomatoes grown in California. Harvesters using electronic sorters can further reduce labor requirements.