Estimation Of The Covered Area (Coverage) By Farm Machinery

Estimation Of The Covered Area (Coverage) By Farm Machinery
Toshiyuki Tsujimoto
Tsukuba International Agricultural Training Center

The utilization of machinery requires large investment on purchasing and the machinery are used for a long term, and cannot be compared to-materials, such as fertilizer and pesticide. Moreover, the fixed costs like depreciation amount on machinery, capital interest, taxes and insurance are composed no matter how long or short the usage period of the farm machinery equipment was during the year. Therefore the more longer period the machinery used and more field area covered by farm machinery, the more economical it will be per hour and hector. On the other hand, the farm machinery are not capable for usage all the .year around, like the industrial ones because crop production is influenced by season and weather.
Therefore, its usage period of farm machinery is restricted by each type of field work, each regional agriculture method, and growing period of the crops. Accordingly, to make economical use of the machines, it is necessary to make sure the machinery are purposely purchased and also needs plan to make good use of it.
If the utilization plan is not well prepared before the machineries are introduced, the economical charges might be increased by two reasons.
(1) unable to cover the fixed area within the limited work period
(2) machine cannot be used to full capacity because of too small area
Thus, the possible work area in the limited time by field work effi¬ciency of farm machinery is commonly called to be "the covered area by ma¬chinery." "This covered area (coverage)" is varied, even if the same machinery is used. The factor for variation are the climate where farmers are located, geo¬graphical feature and the farm management such as the character of group farm¬ing and the combination of the crops.
It is essential to establish the utilization plan of the efficient machinery work at first, then the work will proceed since the covered area is determined by the size of the machinery and its efficiency.