Automation applications will be orientated towards and assist in the attainment of environmentally friendly and sustainable systems of agricultural and food production. However, the difficulties in matching environmental concerns and sustainability with an ever-increasing world population cannot be underestimated especially in the developing countries. Thus, there may be a tension between maximizing food production on the one hand and implementing sustainable development and environmental protection systems (e.g. erosion control) especially, in poorer regions, where the demand for increased food production follows logically from an increasing population.
The concept of timeliness recognizes that there is an optimum time to perform certain crop production operations from planting through to harvesting. If one or more of these operations is performed too early or too late, a timeliness penalty is likely to accrue, that is, yield and/or the quality of the crop is diminished, yielding a lower price to the farmer. For example, the ideal time to harvest grain is when the crop is ripe and the moisture is low (see also, Maintaining Working Conditions and Operation of Machinery).

Likewise, transplantation in areas inaccessible to tractors (rice paddy fields or steep mountain slopes) is possible using aerial power where large areas need to be planted in order to justify the increased cost. It is thus no accident that rental markets for threshing machines were well established in the nineteenth century in the United States and are now common all over Asia (Gardezi and others 1979; Walker and Kshirsagar 1981). The contract-hire system for combines in the United States illustrates the problem of synchronized timing. The contractors achieve higher rates of machinery utilization by migrating to follow the harvest from the TexasOklahoma area to the northern states, where harvesting takes place months later.

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