A PLOUGH IN ACTION NOTICE THE SOIL BEING TURN OVER.The plough or plow is a tool (or machine) used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting to loosen or turn the soil. Ploughs are traditionally drawn by working animals such as horses or cattle, but in modern times may be drawn by tractors. A plough may be made of wood, iron, or steel frame with an attached blade or stick used to cut the earth. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, although written references to the plough do not appear in English until 1100 CE at which point it is referenced frequently. The plough represents one of the major advances in agriculture.

The primary purpose of ploughing is to turn over the upper layer of the soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface, while burying weeds, the remains of previous crops and allowing them to break down. As the plough is drawn through the soil it creates long trenches of fertile soil called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is typically left to dry out, and is then harrowed before planting. Plowing and cultivating a soil homogenizes and modifies the upper 12 to 25 cm of the soil to form a plow layer. In many soils, the majority of fine plant feeder roots can be found in the topsoil or plow layer.

TRAILED SPRAYER FOR ORCHARDS AND VINEYARDSA sprayer is a device used to spray a liquid.

In agriculture, a sprayer is a piece of equipment that is used to apply herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers on agricultural crops. Sprayers range in size from man-portable units (typically backpacks with spray guns) to trailed sprayers that are connected to a tractor, to self-propelled units similar to tractors, with boom mounts of 60151 feet in length.

CTM Johson Tomato HarvesterWhile mechanical harvesting was initially controversial because it seemingly displaced human labor, it reduced harvesting costs by nearly one half and eliminated an economic constraint on the US processing tomato industry, resulting in large increases in tomato acreage and yield. Those increases, in turn, provided additional employment in field work, transportation and processing that more than offset the displaced harvesting jobs.

In agriculture, a harrow (often called a set of harrows in a plurale tantum sense) is an implement for breaking up and smoothing out the surface of the soil. In this way it is distinct in its effect from the plough, which is used for deeper tillage. Harrowing is often carried out on fields to follow the rough finish left by ploughing operations. The purpose of this harrowing is generally to break up clods (lumps of soil) and to provide a finer finish, a good tilth or soil structure that is suitable for seedbed use. Coarser harrowing may also be used to remove weeds and to cover seed after sowing. Harrows differ from cultivators in that they disturb the whole surface of the soil, such as to prepare a seedbed, instead of disturbing only narrow trails that skirt crop rows (to kill weeds).

A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction. Most commonly, the term is used to describe a farm vehicle that provides the power and traction to mechanize agricultural tasks, especially (and originally) tillage, but nowadays a great variety of tasks. Agricultural implements may be towed behind or mounted on the tractor, and the tractor may also provide a source of power if the implement is mechanised.

The word tractor was taken from Latin, being the agent noun of trahere "to pull".[1][2] The first recorded use of the word meaning "an engine or vehicle for pulling wagons or ploughs" occurred in 1901, displacing the earlier term "traction engine" (1859)

A seed drill is a sowing device that precisely positions seeds in the soil and then covers them. Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by hand. Besides being wasteful, planting was very imprecise and led to a poor distribution of seeds, leading to low productivity. Jethro Tull is widely thought of as having invented the seed drill, though earlier the Sumerians used a single-tube seed drill, and the Chinese had also used a multi-tube seed drill.[1] The use of a seed drill can improve the ratio of crop yield (seeds harvested per seed planted) by as much as nine times.

Drip irrigation, also known as trickle irrigation or micro irrigation or localized irrigation, is an irrigation method that saves water and fertilizer by allowing water to drip slowly to the roots of plants, either onto the soil surface or directly onto the root zone, through a network of valves, pipes, tubing, and emitters. It is done through narrow tubes that deliver water directly to the base of the plant.

Wind winnowing is an agricultural method developed by ancient cultures for separating grain from chaff. It is also used to remove weevils or other pests from stored grain. Threshing, the loosening of grain or seeds from the husks and straw, is the step in the chaff-removal process that comes before winnowing.

In its simplest form it involves throwing the mixture into the air so that the wind blows away the lighter chaff, while the heavier grains fall back down for recovery. Techniques included using a winnowing fan (a shaped basket shaken to raise the chaff) or using a tool (a winnowing fork or shovel) on a pile of harvested grain.

Winnowing can also describe the natural removal of fine material from a coarser sediment by wind or flowing water, analogous to the agricultural separation of wheat from chaff.

A reaper is a farming tool or person that reaps (cuts and gathers) crops at harvest, when they are ripe.A mechanical reaper or reaping machine is a mechanical, semi-automated device that harvests crops. Mechanical reapers are an important part of mechanized agriculture and a main feature of agricultural productivity.After the first reapers were developed and patented, other slightly different reapers were distributed by several manufacturers throughout the world. The Champion (Combined) Reapers and Mowers, produced by the Champion Interest group (Champion Machine Company, later Warder, Bushnell & Glessner, absorbed in IHC 1902) in Springfield, Ohio in the second half of the 19th century, were highly successful in the 1880s in the United States.[9] Springfield is still known as "The Champion City".

A cultivator is any of several types of farm implement used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with teeth (also called shanks) that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it linearly. Another sense refers to machines that use rotary motion of disks or teeth to accomplish a similar result. The rotary tiller is a principal example.

Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weedscontrolled disturbance of the topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis, or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow, which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds.