This paper explores an obsolescence of labor that did not take place. In the 1960s, Florida's citrus growers appeared poised to accompany farmers across the South in pursuing a strategy of agricultural modernization that would mechanize their harvesting labor, rendering obsolete the thirty thousand Black and white farmworkers who harvested the orange crop. Their efforts were coordinated by the Florida Citrus Commission's Harvesting Research and Development Committee (HRDC), a rotating group of growers, trade association representatives, researchers, and engineers, who were confident that mechanization was within their grasp. But two decades later, every Florida orange was harvested by hand and HRDC's funding had been gutted. Why did growers think that mechanizing harvesting labor was both necessary and imminent? And then why, within only two decades, did they make such an about-face, largely abandoning the project of mechanization? The answer, I argue, lies in the particularities of the citrus industry's experience of globalization. At the level of capital, Florida's growers were caught flat-footed by competition from the nascent citrus industry of the State of São Paulo, Brazil; and at the level of labor, immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti swelled the ranks of available workers. The narrative moves between Florida and São Paulo, examining the efforts of growers to control, monitor, and replace farmworkers, and farmworkers’ response, with the efforts and commentary of the HRDC providing the unifying thread. The argument is shown to bear on (1) the historiography of the South's agricultural modernization and (2) the historiography of the South's globalization (the “Nuevo South”), showing that it is necessary to join these two rarely connected historiographies to understand Florida's citrus industry, whose mechanization efforts spanned the 1960s histories of agricultural modernization and the 1980s histories of globalization.

How can agricultural mechanization be accomplished in a sustainable and equitable way? This question has gained increased prominence in mechanization research over the past few years. In this study, we apply the question to mechanized maize shelling in Tanzania as a case in point. Data from a survey with 400 farmers and from semi-structured interviews with 21 key informants are combined for a gender analysis that relies on Kabeer's concept of four institutional sites (household, community, market and government). The findings reveal that although mechanization reduces men's and women's perceived drudgery of shelling, relief depends on gendered patterns of labor allocation and decision-making at the household level. As a result, the transformation of inequitable norms emerges as paramount. Key informants identified additional aspects that would make mechanized shelling more equitable and sustainable, such as mainstreaming gender and mechanization in comprehensive agricultural training, or the sensitization of mechanized input suppliers and manufacturers to farmers' preferences (including gender-sensitive machine design). Concerted efforts in multiple institutional sites are needed to achieve lasting change in respect of equity in mechanization.

Specialty crops, like flowers, herbs, and vegetables, generally do not have an adequate spectrum of herbicide chemistries to control weeds and have been dependent on hand weeding to achieve commercially acceptable weed control. However, labor shortages have led to higher costs for hand weeding. There is a need to develop labor-saving technologies for weed control in specialty crops if production costs are to be contained. Machine vision technology, together with data processors, have been developed to enable commercial machines to recognize crop row patterns and control automated devices that perform tasks such as removal of intrarow weeds, as well as to thin crops to desired stands. The commercial machine vision systems depend upon a size difference between the crops and weeds and/or the regular crop row pattern to enable the system to recognize crop plants and control surrounding weeds. However, where weeds are large or the weed population is very dense, then current machine vision systems cannot effectively differentiate weeds from crops. Commercially available automated weeders and thinners today depend upon cultivators or directed sprayers to control weeds. Weed control actuators on future models may use abrasion with sand blown in an air stream or heating with flaming devices to kill weeds. Future weed control strategies will likely require adaptation of the crops to automated weed removal equipment. One example would be changes in crop row patterns and spacing to facilitate cultivation in two directions. Chemical company consolidation continues to reduce the number of companies searching for new herbicides; increasing costs to develop new herbicides and price competition from existing products suggest that the downward trend in new herbicide development will continue. In contrast, automated weed removal equipment continues to improve and become more effective.

We consider endogenous changes of inputs from labor to capital in the production of intermediate goods, i.e., a form of mechanization. We derive complementary relationships between capital accumulation and mechanization by assuming a Cobb–Douglas production function for the production of final goods from intermediate goods. A constant-elasticity-of-substitution production function in which the elasticity of substitution exceeds unity can be endogenously derived as the envelope of Cobb–Douglas production functions when the efficiency of inputs is assumed in a specific form. The difficulty of mechanization represents the elasticity of substitution.

Technological advances have contributed to impressive yield gains and have greatly altered US agriculture. Selective breeding and directed molecular techniques address biological shortcomings of plants and animals and overcome environmental limitations. Improvements in mechanization, particularly of power sources and harvest equipment, reduce labor requirements and increase productivity and worker safety. Conservation systems, often designed to overcome problems introduced from other technologies, reduce negative impacts on soil and water and improve the environmental sustainability of production systems. Advances in information systems, largely developed in other disciplines and adapted to agriculture, are only beginning to impact US production practices. This paper is the fourth in the series of manuscripts exploring drivers of US agricultural systems. While development of technology is still largely driven by a need to address a problem, adoption is closely linked with other drivers of agricultural systems, most notably social, political and economic. Here, we explore the processes of innovation and adoption of technologies and how they have shaped agriculture. Technologies have increased yield and net output, and have also resulted in decreased control by producers, increased intensification, specialization and complexity of production, greater dependence on non-renewable resources, increased production inputs and hence decreased return, and an enhanced reliance on future technology. Future technologies will need to address emerging issues in land use, decline in work force and societal support of farming, global competition, changing social values in both taste and convenience of food, and increasing concerns for food safety and the environment. The challenge for farmers and researchers is to address these issues and develop technologies that balance the needs of producers with the expectations of society and create economically and environmentally sustainable production systems.

Draft animal power (DAP) has been identified as an environmentally friendly technology that is based on renewable energy and encompasses integration of livestock and crop production systems. Draft animal technology provides farmers with a possibility to cheaply access and use manure from the draft animals and farm power needed to apply renewable practices for land intensification. Compared to motorized mechanization, DAP is viewed as an appropriate and affordable technology especially for small-scale farmers in developing countries who cannot afford the expensive fuel-powered tractor mechanization. However, it is apparent that there is no consensus among researchers on how it affects crop yields, profit and production efficiency when applied in farm operations. This study addressed the question of whether using DAP increases economic efficiency of smallholder maize producers in central Kenya. Results of the study are derived from a sample of 80 farmers, 57% of whom used draft animals while 43% used hand hoes in carrying farm operations. In the study area, draft animals are almost exclusively used for land preparation and planting, with very few farmers applying them in the consecutive operations such as weeding. A profit function was estimated to test the hypothesis of equal economic efficiency between ‘DAP’ and ‘hoe’ farms. The results showed that farmers who used DAP obtained higher yields and operated at a higher economic efficiency compared to those who used hand hoes. The analysis underscores the viability of DAP in increasing profitability of small-scale farms; however, other aspects of the technology, such as affordability of the whole DAP package, availability of appropriate implements and skills of using the technology, must be taken into account when promoting adoption of DAP technology.

In this paper, the Hungarian Grey, a traditional draught and beef cattle was studied. This breed was threatened by extinction due to the mechanization of agriculture and propagation of upgraded breeds which had almost completely replaced it. Following a crisis in the 1960's (in 1966 only 470 dams were registered) a pioneering conservation scheme was introduced. Thanks to scientific breeding, the number of cows increased to approximately 1 600 and the risk of inbreeding has been avoided. In addition to a historical review, body conformation, production characteristics and modern forms of exploitation for this rare but genetically valuable breed are discussed.