Overview of combine harvester and tractor structure on farms in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Agricultural machinery in general is the main means of realizing the production plan on the farm. There is a difference between big and small size farms in the structure of agricultural machine use. It depends on the utilization ratio and annual performance of the machines and also on the production structure. New machines are primarily acquired by economically strong subjects, which are able to create the right condition for intensive use and fast renewal rate of this new machinery. This study was made for tractors and selfpropelled combine harvesters in the Czech Republic conditions. There was big investment in this sector to the technology and machines in recent years. However, the results still show a long-term failure in the tempo of recovery and this can have a negative impact on the technical state of the machines and technological lines, their operation reliability, environmental aspects of production and operating costs of machines with negative resulting to production economics. The result shows that the rate of machine innovation depends not only on the economic prosperity and stability of agricultural companies, but strongly on capital support from public resources, too. In the paper the numbers of machinery in the agricultural sector in the last 20 years in the Czech Republic are evaluated. After renewal, the technique is reducing the number of machines expected due to higher efficiency and performance. Renewal of combine harvesters depends on 6 years cycle due to the depreciation period in accounting and the selling process of harvesting machines has a seasonal character.