Comparison of mowing by a rotary cutter mounted to a tractor and by a walking type hammer knife mower was carried out in three tree forms that were the hedgerow and the Y form, both forms aimed for easy tractor operation, and the vase form, a common practice.
The tractor ran parallel to tree rows in the hedgerow and the Y form, making turns on head lands adjacent to tree rows.
In the vase form, it ran back and forth between tree rows, making turns within the orchard. It also backed to mow grass as close as possible to pillars, stay wires and tree trunks.
The walking type hammer knife mower ran parallel to tree rows in all the tree forms; In case of the hedgerow and the Y form, it made turns on the head land, while in the vase form, it made turns within the orchard and weaved to dodge the tree trunks.
When mowing was done by a rotary cutter mounted to a tractor, operation hours in the hedgerow and the Y form were respectively 41% and 33% of that in the vase form.
On the other hand, when mowing was done by a walking type hammer knife mower, operation hours in the hedgerow and the Y form were somewhat shorter than in the vase form. but the difference was small.
This was due to the small difference in time required for the straight drive which accounted to about 90% in all three tree forms.
When mowed by a rotary cutter mounted to a tractor, land left unmowed was about double of that mowed by a walking type hammer knife mower, owing to 1) the difficulty for the rotary cutter to mow close to tree trunks, pillars and stay wires of the trellis, and to 2) the unnecessarily wide overlapping of mowing path between tree rows.
Land left unmowed can be reduced by 1) closer operation of the cutter to trees through proper management of shoots in the hedgerow and pulling up the trellis by wires in the Y form, 2) reduction of overlapping of mowing path to the minimum required.
Operation hours can be reduced by using herbicides near tree trunks, pillars and stay wires.
In the vase form, mowing by a hammer knife mower was more labour saving than mowing by a rotary cutter mounted to a tractor. In the Y form and the hedgerow (the new tree forms), mowing by a rotary cutter mounted to a tractor was more labour saving than mowing by a hammer knife mower.
It is apparant that labor efficiency is about 1.5-1.8 times better when a rotary cutter mounted to a tractor is used in the new tree forms compared to when a hammer knife mower is used in the vase form.

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The measure to acquire the mechanized working technique with high energy utilization efficiency was studied by optimizing a combination of a tractor with a work equipment.
1) After the load characteristic of a main work equipment for tractors was measured, it was found that the work equipment for tilling required the heaviest power, came next the work equipment for harvesting, breaking and leveling and the work equipment for control, fertilizing and sowing required the lightly power.
If these operations are performed by one tractor, a large tractor suitable for tilling would be required and the output utilization ratio of the tractor would be too small for other operations.
2) After the influence of the factor on the load characteristic of the work equipment was measured by a plow and rotary tiller, it was recognized that both the required power and fuel consumption have a constant primary linear relationship with the travel speed, working width, depth and hardness of soil respectively.
3) When about 80% of the tractor maximum output was used that the fuel consumption per horsepower and fuel consumption work volume were high. Further, in the rotary cultivation with a certain area, the smaller the tractor was, the wider the working width was, and the lower the travel speed was, the less the fuel consumption was.
4) The “Balanced Load System” which adapts the load for the work equipment with the tractor output by making the work equipment load uniform is regarded as a working method with high energy utilization effciency. The balanced load system was calculated by varying the working width whereby the load for the work equipment can be easily increased and decreased. As a result, a non-realistic working width was given, however it was considered reasonable that this system should be based on a 30 PS class tractor.
5) In a tilling operation with a particularly great load, the tractor for use could be reduced to half in size and the fuel consumption be reduced by about 30% without reducing the work efficiency and accuracy by dispersing the load by means of partial cultivation.

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1) In order to evaluate the energy for agricultural work in crop production from the energy standpoint, the supplied energy in custom cultivation for main crop was actually measured. The fuel consumption per 10 ares was 7 to 11l, the difference in crop was little and a lot of energy was required for tilling, requiring improvements in works of this process.
2) By performing the tillage operation, fertilizing and sowing operations simultaneously like the rotary seeder, the energy was saved by about 30% in this process, being effective,
3) In the partial cultivation system, in which only the sowing drills are tilled beltlike by 50% and the untilled portion is cultivated during cultivation, about 30% energy was saved. The development of the fly earth utilization partial cultivation fertilizing and sowing machine which generally uses a cultivator increases the sowing accuracy and as a result, the growth of farm product and crop were not reduced.
4) In the super partial cultivation in which the tilling width is exceedingly narrow and the simple cultivation using a disc harrow, these were effective for expansible, soft soil, however there was a possibility of lowered growth for farm product in other soils.
5) For the guttering sowing by the developed single disc drive type seeder, the required power is about 1/10 times as much as that of the all-out cultivation seeder, and it was effective in stabilization of sprouting seeding under wet soil condition for converted field soybean and the like. There were more advantageous points than the all-out cultivation.

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The 23rd congress of CIOSTA (Comite International d'Organisation Scientifique du Travail en Agriculture) was held at Bled, Republic of Slovenia, Yugoslavia from Sep. 13 through Sep. 16 in 1988 with 88 participants from 13 countries (Table 1). The presentations of research results in each topic are shown in Table 2.
Attractive and important points for me among presented lectures are as follows:
1) The important roles of information engineering and electronic devices are actually and hopefully emphasized to prevent the declining tendency of the present agriculture and to reorganize and develop the future agriculture.
2) It was stressed that harmony between natural ecosystems and agricultural development should be indispensable.
3) Tight managment systems of agricu ture in socialistic countries are more or less being ammended toward more liberalized direction.
4) The rate of part-time farmers are rapidly increasing in any coutry. Various means to improve their livelyhood were proposed, e. g. recruiting them in non-agricultural jobs more widely, raise-up of their wages outside of farming, stabilization of their employment conditions, reduction of farm work load of women, mutual supplementation by combining together different types of part-time farms (Table 3), etc..
5) Factor analyses of farm accidents and near accidents are advancing both in research methods and in findings to prevent accidents. Typical examples were presented by Prof. Dr. Hammer from FRG and Dr. Oksanen from Finland.
6) In the closing session, Prof. Dr. Preuschen of FRG, one of the founders of CIOSTA, looked upon the future increase of monotonous jobs in farm work and stressed the necessity of studies in these fields.
On my way of getting to Bled and back, I visited three research institutes in Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerlands and The Netherlands. I could obtain, through intimate discussions, new information chiefly about the effects of vibration on human body and research techniques of monotonous work.

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