A wide range of tools and equipment, from compact tractors to chainsaws and from winches to torque wrenches, are employed on today's productive and efficiently organized smallholdings. There are few publications that provide the smallholder with comprehensive, technical, and maintenance information and this well-illustrated book helps to fill a gap.

This antique text contains a guide to the various buildings, machinery and tools that are found on a small farm. It provides information on economics and maintenance, as well as the equipment required for profitable and productive business. Including simple, concise descriptions, helpful diagrams, comments on usage, and much more besides, this text will prove invaluable to the novice farmer, and makes for a valuable addition to collections agricultural literature. Although old, much of the information contained herein is timeless. The chapters of this book include: 'What is necessary and What is Economic to Invest In', 'Hand Tools', 'Hand tools for The Land', 'Hand Tools for The Workshop', 'Hand-propelled Equipment', 'Horse and Pony-Drawn Equipment', 'Auto-Culto, ''B-M-B''', 'Other Mechanical Units', 'Buildings', etcetera. We are proud to republish this vintage volume, now complete with a new introduction on agricultural tools and machinery.

This guide to small-scale farming equipment offers information to smallholder farmers, development workers, and manufacturers all over the world. Each subject area - field power, soil preparation, crop preparation - is introduced by a specialist who evaluates the effectiveness of equipment.

Josh Volk, author of the best-selling Compact Farms, offers small-scale farmers an in-depth guide to building customized equipment that will save time and money and introduce much-needed efficiencies to their operations. Volk begins with the basics, such as setting up a workshop and understanding design principles, mechanical principles, and materials properties, then presents plans for making 15 tools suited to small-farm tasks and processes. Each project includes an explanation of the tool’s purpose and use, as well as the time commitment, skill level, and equipment required to build it. Projects range from the super-simple (requiring a half-day to build) to the more complex, and include how-to photographs and illustrations with variations for customizing the finished implement. Along with instructions for building items such as simple seedling benches, a mini barrel washer, a DIY germination chamber, and a rolling pack table, Volk addresses systems design for farm efficiency, including how to design an effective drip irrigation system and how to set up spreadsheets for collecting important planning, planting, and market data. This publication conforms to the EPUB Accessibility specification at WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

This framework presents ten interrelated principles/elements to guide Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization in Africa (SAMA). Further, it presents the technical issues to be considered under SAMA and the options to be analysed at the country and sub regional levels. The ten key elements required in a framework for SAMA are as follows: The analysis in the framework calls for a specific approach, involving learning from other parts of the world where significant transformation of the agricultural mechanization sector has already occurred within a three-to-four decade time frame, and developing policies and programmes to realize Africa’s aspirations of Zero Hunger by 2025. This approach entails the identification and prioritization of relevant and interrelated elements to help countries develop strategies and practical development plans that create synergies in line with their agricultural transformation plans. Given the unique characteristics of each country and the diverse needs of Africa due to the ecological heterogeneity and the wide range of farm sizes, the framework avoids being prescriptive.

This Storey BASICS® title offers exactly what you need to know to keep your small farm’s equipment in good working order. Long-time farmers Steve and Ann Larkin Hansen cover everything from tractors and mowers to trimmers, tillers, ATVs, plows, discs, drills, planters, cultivators, mechanical rakes, and balers, showing you how to care for your equipment to prevent problems and how to diagnose and fix the things that do go wrong.