Abstract
With extending scale of paddy farming in Japan, a handy systematical method for recording agricultural work is required for improving the farming management. From this view point, a hand-held GPS unit was improved to collect the track log of agricultural machine automatically for a long period of time, and software to distinguish the field received machinery work using the track log was developed. Regardless of a slight error due to the GPS and the field map, it was possible to distinguish the field received machinery operation by using log10 (A/T) and D/A (A: area of field (10a) ; T: staying time of machine in the field (sec) ; D: moving distance of machine (m)) as predictor variables in the discriminating analysis. The developed recording system consisted of the improved GPS unit and software was tested on four large-scale farms, and it was effective in determining the location of field and the time of operation. By adding more information, i.e., crop species, names of operators, kinds of work, power sources, attachments etc. to the field list obtained from the track log, the daily record of machinery work can be very useful for the large-scale farmer not only to evaluate the management of crop production and the efficiency of machinery operation but also in planning future works. The seeding time and the harvesting time of wheat in the studied area were defined from the track log with the program developed in this study. The relationships between seeding time and harvesting time or duration of time from seeding to harvesting are shown.
