Likewise, the use of preventive maintenance protocols are desirable in the off-season e.g. replacing parts (such as bearings or soil engaging elements) that may break or wear out before they need repair or replacement. The use of highly skilled and competent operators is also desirable to ensure optimal performance of equipment that is generally getting bigger, working faster and becoming more complex despite the welcome introduction of more automated control and ergonomic systems designed to assist and enhance performance. The development of the moldboard plow facilitated the inversion and burial of layers of surface vegetation (grass, weeds, cereal stubble), exposing a virgin soil surface which could then be further broken down into a fine seed bed by draft or power driven tined implements. The development of the multi-furrow moldboard plow powered by high-speed tractors underscores the high productivity of modern mechanization systems as compared to the single furrow plow drawn by a slow moving draft animal.
In addition, some (but not all) mechanization is subject to genuine economies of scale: it is technically more efficient to design a large rather than a small machine. Even machines invented in countries with abundant labor (and therefore smaller farms) were first developed for the largest farms, because they had the lowest costs of capital relative to labor.The market for machines expanded to smaller farms only when labor costs rose or capital became more abundant. In the history of engineering, technical developments have often been embodied in smaller and smaller machines. They should therefore be able to mitigate the potential for distributional inequities within the commune and judge mechanization primarily in terms of profit. This might help to explain the complementarity between animal and mechanical power in Chinese agriculture found by Ramaswamy (1981). Interregional equity is more complicated.
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