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Mechanization of agriculture is a progressive development of steadily increasing scope and importance, and it continues with more and more exploitation of mechanical and electrical power for almost every farming task.

More and more machines and equipment of all sorts are used on farms today, replacing hand labour and increasing labour productivity. Since the 1930s, progress has been revolutionary. A rapid acceleration in the use of tractors and other engine-driven field machinery has been followed by the development of a wide range of sophisticated equipment for carrying out essential operation better and cheaper. With machines and power available, farmers may not only do more work and do it more economically; they can also perform higher-quality work, and the work may be finished in a shorter and more favourable time.

Many machines are known to be powered by tractors. Implements such as plows, cultivators and planters may be mounted on, or pulled by, a tractor. However, through economic reasons, an increasing number of farm machines are now self-propelled. Among these machines we may name grain combine harvesters, cotton pickers, forage harvesters, and many other specialized farm machines.

There are certain machinery service parameters that need to be paid attention to in terms of economic optimization of farming practices. Economics and statistics prompt that less monies will be spent in agriculture if, say, efficient power of a tractor grows, engine’s specific fuel consumption goes down, machine’s efficiency and reliability become higher. Also, lower maintenance costs, including service costs, as well as decreased fuel and grease costs allow extra financial means to be saved for other - most of the time more important - farm-related expenses and the business expansion. And it goes without saying that the higher is the durability and the wear-proof ability of the equipment employed, the brighter are the economic perspectives of the enterprise exploiting it.

The scope for future development is limited only by the necessity for mechanization to be economic. Already much of the new equipment includes automatic control devices, and these are certain to play an ever-increasing part in agricultural mechanization in the future. They open up whole new fields of development, such as automatic control of environment for both crops and livestock. Also, because electricity is considerably cheaper than liquid and gas fuels, machines that do not require mobility are usually driven with electric motors. Such installations include silage unloaders, livestock feeding equipment and milking machines.

To illustrate the arguments cited above, let’s take Great Britain as a sound example. Mechanization, supported by other scientific advances, has transformed the place of agriculture in the national economy. In the mid-nineteenth century about a quarter of the working population of Britain were engaged in agriculture, and farming produced about one fifth of the country’s wealth. Today, about 5.5 per cent of the gross national product is produced by less than 3 per cent of the gainfully employed population - a labour use considered to be the lowest in the world of today. Current national trends of spreading and growing in volume use of mechanical equipment on farms are reflected in statistical reports dealing with it.