We have seen significant shifts in every industry through modernisation and technology development. Talking about the agriculture industry, decades ago, farmers used to plant, sow, irrigate, and harvest crops manually using specific tools like hoes, sickles, axes, etc. They used to water each crop individually and harvest them one by one. It would consume a lot of time and energy, which isn’t affordable for modern farmers due to the increasing population and fast-moving life. The survival needs are increasing, and there is a need to grow plenty of crops in a short time with enriched quality as well. The small farms have transformed into large fields, and farmers’ demands are also increasing. The traditional approach was also considerable, and it held its own value, but as time demanded, we needed to have better and more functional methods in farming. That is why modern agriculture has seen some major farming tools and techniques developments. Through decades there have been a lot of changes in the ways of farming. The world has seen tractors, irrigation channels, sprinklers, and electric machines cut the crops coming into the farms. In this article, we will talk about some of the latest modern harvesting tools that have newly been introduced into farming methods to make the procedure easy for the field workers and increase the yield like never before. To know everything, keep reading till the end.
Limb Shaker
Harvesting the fruits for processing is done with limb shakers.
Limb shakers can harvest fruits like apricots, pears, peaches, sour cherries etc. By applying long strokes to limbs at a low frequency, these limb shakers precisely remove a large percentage of fruit. The operator’s handle on the shaker can be used to control the shaker remotely. This approach may cause harm to the tree’s bark and limbs, as well as the removal of immature fruits. The efficiency of this harvesting system is determined by the cultivars used and the orchard’s operating circumstances. Abscission chemicals have been touted as a way to improve harvest efficiency.
Crop Dividers
One of the latest tools that have proven to work best for farmers is a crop divider. It is used at the time of harvest when it is the time to cut the crops. As the name suggests, crop dividers’ fundamental purpose is to divide the crops on the farm. They can separate and lift the interwoven stalks during harvesting, making it easier for the yield to be fed to the harvester smoothly.
They are situated on the tractor at the frontal and back ends of the tractor machines. Shaped like sharp cones, the tip of the crop divider smoothly sequentially cuts the crops making it easy and accessible for the farmers to harvest.
- They may seem heavy to lift but are incredibly lightweight and smooth.
- As they are a one-time investment, so they are durable to keep working for years if maintained and handled carefully.
- Some people might think that attaching the dividers around the tractors must be challenging and requires extreme forces. Still, they are designed to get easily attached and fixed with any harvesting vehicle.
- The divider properly gets installed and does not come off until and unless it is not taken out manually. So if you are at high speed in the field, there is no possibility of these tools coming off during the harvesting session.
Robotic Harvester
In order to solve the problem of a declining number of farm labourers and rising fruit harvesting costs, farmers have shifted to automatic techniques. Fruit detection on the trees is done using computer vision and a sensor in the autonomous picking of fruits. It has a robotic arm that moves to the identified fruit’s location on the monitor and harvests the fruit with the end effector without hurting anything in between. This particular technology is still being studied and will take some time and a few modifications to be used globally.