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![[image of flower]](../../ima/flowXS_06.gif)
Food Production |
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Chronology
The earliest interests and successes in farm productivity were in the machinery used to replace the muscle of people and animals in the planting and harvesting of various crops. Fishing vessels and equipment were designed to obtain the greatest hauls. Farm machinery must be adapted to the size of the farms. Large, expensive harvesting machines work well on vast wheat and corn uplands, but cannot be used on small lowland farms, called mucklands. Plows A plow is a farm tool used to cut furrows in and turn up the soil, preparing it for planting. Wooden plows are ancient. The early plow consisted of a wooden wedge, tipped with iron and fastened to a single handle, and a beam, which was pulled by men or oxen. This plow could break the sod, but not invert it. The first major plow improvement was the moldboard, a curved board that turns over the slice of earth cut by the share, thus changing it. Important improvements in design and materials were made in the early part of the 19th century. They included streamlined moldboards, replaceable shares, and steel plows with self-scouring moldboards. Standardized by 1870, the modern moldboard plow has been improved by various attachments, e.g., the colter, a sharp blade or disk that cuts the ground in advance of the share. In 19th-century America horses largely replaced oxen for drawing plows. Tractors now supply this power in most developed parts of the world. With more powerful tractors, larger plows have come into use. Among the various types of plows in use today are the reversible two-way plow for contour plowing; listers and middlebusters, which prepare shallow beds; the disk plow , whose revolving concave disks are useful in working hard or dry soil; the rotary plow, with an assembly of knives on the shaft that mix the surface growth with the soil; and the chisel plow, with points mounted on long shanks to loosen hard, dry soils and shatter hard subsoils. Encycl n.p. Tractors The tractor is a vehicle used to pull farm machinery and wagons. It replaced animal and human power on the farm, thus greatly improving farm productivity that contributed to lower costs and cheaper food to consumers. The first tractors were driven by steam, but these were replaced by the more efficient gasoline tractors. Cultivators A cultivator reduces soil to fine particles in which plant seeds will grow. The earliest cultivators consisted of a steel chisel (tine) that was run over plowed land to break up the soil. Modern rotary cultivators both plow and cultivate the soil. Seeders Seeding was mechanized by a series of inventions that eliminated hand (broadcast) seeding of grain, and poles to poke holes into which seed was placed. Harvesting Cotton was harvested by hand, but now it is done mechanically, either by a cotton picker, a machine that removes the cotton from the boll without damaging the cotton plant, or by a cotton stripper which strips the entire boll off the plant. Cotton strippers are generally used in regions where it is too windy to grow picker varieties of cotton and generally used after application of a defoliant or natural defoliation occurring after a freeze. A cotton module builder is a machine that compresses harvested cotton into a large block, which is then covered with a tarp and temporarily stored at the edge of the field. Wiki n.p.. Separating cotton seeds, sticks and burrs, and baling cotton is done with a modern cotton gin (= engine).
The large volume of wheat produced was very labor intensive to plant, reap, and thresh. It took many men (and some women) many hours to hand-cut the wheat with scythes. At harvest time, there often weren't enough farm hands to get the wheat out of the fields and into the barns. After cutting, the wheat had to be hand-threshed, another laborious task. Therefore, many inventors turned their ingenuity to the task of mechanizing wheat planting and harvesting. Mowing ripe wheat is done today with a swather, a machine that replaced the binder (combine harvester) and the earlier reaper. The reaper cut the grain stalks, which then had to be gathered up and threshed; that is the grain had to separated from the straw. Threshing machines were then developed separate from the reapers. The grain had to be brought to them or they were dragged into the field. Modern combines cut, thresh, clean and bag the grain. First, metal rotating sails pull the grain into a reciprocating knife bar that cuts it off at stubble height. The crop falls onto a cutter table (header) that is swept to the center by rotating augers. A central elevator gathers the cut crop and conveys it to the body of the machine where it is threshed by the drum, which is an open cylinder of beater bars rotating at high speed that rubs the grain out of the heads. The straw is conveyed to the back of the machine by jog-trough straw walkers for disposal back onto the ground. The grain and chaff fall onto sieves that sort the large pieces and then through a winnowing blast of air the chaff is blown away. The grain at the bottom of the machine is side-augured across a chain-and-flight elevator that carries it to a tank on top. Another auger inside a conveyor pushes the grain into a truck. The tank holds up to five tons of grain, so each quarter hour it must be unloaded to the truck. The combine processed 7 to 8 acres of wheat per hour and each acre of land may yield 4 or more tons of grain. Compare the productivity of this machine to a man wielding a scythe, pilling the cut stalks, loading and moving them into a barn on a wagon, and then women beating the stalks against a stone or wood floor to thresh it! Almost every crop today is harvested by machines, rather than people and animals: corn, strawberries, cranberries, sugar cane, and many machine fruit pickers. In 1701, Jethro Tull, an Englishman, invented a horse-drawn seed drill. Carroll 12 In 1720, a wooden plow with a moldboard was patented in England. Around 1781, Andrew Meikle, a millwright from Dunbar, England, invented a mechanical thresher for removing the husks from grain. It was powered first by horses and later by a waterwheel. Carroll 13 In 1785, James Small of Scotland made the first plow with a cast iron moldboard and shares. In 1793, Eli Whitney, an American lawyer and mechanic, invented the cotton gin to separate seeds from the cotton, which had been done manually, usually by slaves. One gin could produce 50 pounds of cotton each day. This invention greatly reduced the cost of raw cotton, cotton cloth, and cotton clothes and served to expand cotton and textile production. Therefore, more people were able to afford to purchase cotton clothes rather than make them at home by the laborious processes of spinning thread, looming cloth, and cutting apparel. The cotton gin increased the demand for cheaper cotton, which in turn increased the demand for more slaves. The cotton gin consists of a rotating drum with metal spikes embedded in it. The spikes embed themselves into the cotton through wooden slats. As the drum turns, the spikes enmesh the cotton and pull it apart, thus freeing the cotton seeds. Small cotton gins were hand-powered, but larger gins were harnessed to horses or water wheels for power. In 1797, Charles Newbold of New Jersey invented a cast iron plow. The plow was cast as one piece, i.e., the moldboard, share, and land side were all cast together. Unfortunately, farmers were too suspicious of using iron as a plow, thinking it might contaminate the soil, so it was not a commercial success. John McCormick and his son, Cyrus, of Virginia, produced an improved Newbold plow that was so popular that they set up manufacturing in Auburn, Leesburg and Alexandria. In 1819, Jethro Wood, a farmer in New York State, invented a 3-piece cast iron plow that he patented in 1814. Its parts were made separately so that if one broke, it could be replaced rather than replacing the entire plow. In 1833, Obed Hussey invented the first successful horse-drawn grain reaper. Schles 229 In 1834, Cyrus McCormick patented his horse-drawn grain reaper, which he had demonstrated in 1831. Obed Hussey proclaimed his own reaper in the same year. McCormick made many improvements on his reapers. His reaper was one of many reapers invented and produced, but his was the most successful because of his persistent efforts to improve it. He sold his first reapers in 1841, but did not start factory production until 1847. He produced 4,000 reapers in 1856 and 23,000 in 1857. Carruth 185,195 The reaper improved the productivity of grain harvesting and lowered the cost of grain products such as flour and bread for consumers to make them more available to more people to improve their standard of living. In 1835, Henry Burden of Troy, NY, invented a machine to produce horseshoes. It was capable of producing 60 horseshoes per minute, a substantial improvement in productivity over shoes made by blacksmiths. Carruth 197 In 1835, A. Y. Moore, of Kalamazoo, MI, patented a horse-drawn machine that harvested, threshed and cleaned wheat and delivered it into a sack. It would not work properly in the damp weather there, but it did in the drier California climate. The Stockton Combined Harvester and Agricultural Works of California was the first manufacturer of combines. How 571 In 1837, Hiram Avery and John Avery Pitts of Winthrop, ME, were issued a patent for a combined thresher and fanning mill. Hiram began manufacture in Chicago with his Chicago-Pitts Company threshers. His threshers were widely used throughout the grain belt for many years and contributed to improved grain harvesting productivity. Carruth 203 In 1837, John Deere produced has first steel blade plow at his blacksmith shop in Grand Detour, IL. The plow cut furrows without being clogged with moist and sticky soil, so it was much more efficient than the cast iron and wooden plows then in use. He formed a business in partnership with Leonard Andrus. In 1847, Deere dissolved his partnership with Andrus and moved himself and his business to Moline, IL, which offered many advantages over the Grand Detour location, such as water power, coal and less expensive rail transportation. There he began manufacture anew. In 1839, D. S. Rockwell invented a horse-drawn corn planter that planted two rows at one time. Schles 239 In 1847, S. Page received a patent on his revolving disc harrow. Schles 254 In 1850, John E. Heath invented the first agricultural binder for tying grain stalks. Carruth 235 In 1852, a Mr. Carman of Bordentown, NJ, hatched chicken eggs using oil heat in place of a sitting hen. This chicken "incubator" was improved upon in later years and was used everywhere by the end of the century to greatly increase poultry productivity. Cunningham 42 In 1858, Lewis Mill was issued a patent on a mowing machine. Schles 274 In 1858, Charles Wesley March received a patent for a harvester that gathers grain into bundles. Schles 274 In 1859, John Francis Appleby of Wisconsin invented a machine to bind leaves of grain as they were cut. This Appleby Knotter was used on the Marsh havester beginning 1875. Carruth 259 The Civil War, which ended in 1865, destroyed many of the cotton plantations, but had little effect on cotton production. Most of the former slaves became sharecroppers or tenant farmers, invariably in debt to the farm owners and local stores. Schles 224 In 1869, James Oliver patented the chilled iron plow. It used a iron body with a hardened surface to which was fitted a cutting edge of tempered steel that can be removed and sharpened. It is especially useful in turning the tough Great Plains sod and was an improvement over the earlier Deere plow. Schles 312 In 1870, L. Cooper Dize of Crisfield, Maryland patented the crab scrape, which is a lightweight oyster dredge with a longer net ("bag") made of twine with a smooth or toothless bottom bar designed to glide over the bottom rather than dig into it. Towed at 2 or 3 knots, the scrape collects crabs and other animal and plant life very efficiently. Warner 81 In 1873, Joseph F. Glidden received a patent for an improved barbed wire. It was essential to keep animals and crops separated on the Great Plains where wood was too scarce to build fences. Without the wire, cattle would roam where they pleased and destroy crops, thereby reducing crop productivity and increasing costs. The importance of barbed wire is indicated by the production statistics: 10,000 lbs. in 1874 and 80,500,000 lbs. in 1880. Carruth 313 In 1879, Carl Gustaf De Laval of Sweden invented the hand-operated centrifugal cream separator (he also invented the steam turbine) that replaced the slow and incomplete gravity method that often left the cream and skim milk sour. This improved productivity of cream separation. The cream was used to produce butter and ice cream, while the skim milk was used as feed and, later, human consumption. The first electrically powered machines were shipped to the U.S. in 1885. The shallow-pan gravitational system left more than 10 percent of the cream in the skimmilk. Therefore, if a cow produced 300 pounds of butterfat a year, the shallow pan system would leave 30 pounds of cream in the skimmilk. At 50 cents a pound, this 30 pounds of butterfat would have a value of $15. Therefore, with a herd of 20 cows whose average butterfat production was 300 pounds, the dairyman would suffer an annual loss of $300. It is estimated that if all the cream that is used annually in the making of butter in the United States had to be separated by the gravitational system, the yearly loss in butterfat at farm prices would be more than $35,000,000. The butterfat left in the skimmilk by the cream separator is negligible, so this saving of $35,000,000 may be credited to De Laval's great invention. McDowell n.p. Around 1885, the McKay Company of Australia built a horse-drawn stripper that used revolving disks to comb the grain heads to flick out the grain heads and husks. Then t winnowed the grain from the husks and delivered them to a bagging spout. It left standing stalks that had to be cut separately. How 571 Massey-Harris of Canada built its first reaper-thresher in 1910. It combined a cutting bar and thresher and was drawn by a steam tractor or a horse. Before that invention, the company produced horse-drawn binders in which the cutting and threshing was powered by the traction from the wheels on the ground. This was hard work on the horses, so many had to be harnessed together to do the work. How 572 In 1911, the overhead sprinkler irrigation system was first used by C. W. Skinner of Troy, Ohio, on New Jersey vegetable farms owned by Charles F. Seabrook. Cunningham 58 The first prototype rotary cultivator was invented by A. C. Howard, an Australian, in 1912. It was powered by a tractor. How 662 In 1922, A. C. Howard, an Australian, produced a commercial rotary cultivator powered by a tractor. How 662 In 1922, Massey-Harris added an engine to their reaper-thresher to power the cutting and threshing that made for easier work for the horses or a small steam tractor. How 572 In 1924, the McKay Co. , which Massey-Harris eventually acquired, built the Sunshine Auto-Harvester with a separate power unit to cut and thresh the grain as well as move the machine. Thus, no separate tractor was required to pull the machinery. How 572 In 1927, a mechanical cotton picker was invented by John D. Rust. Carruth 467 In 1935, tractor-driven harvesting combines were in operation. In 1938, a self-propelled combine was introduced. Carruth 501 |
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