Future trends in agricultural engineering

Abstract

Beside traditional mechanical engineering, other engineering branches such as electronics, control engineering and physics play their specific role within the agricultural engineering field. Agricultural engineering has affected and stimulated major changes in agriculture. In the last decades agricultural engineering has also focused on environmental aspects. Nowadays knowledge and expertise generated in several agricultural and environmental engineering fields must be integrated with expertise of biological and socio-economic sciences. In the evolution towards sustainable agricultural systems important contributions can be made. The re-design of production systems and their technology can help to achieve ecologically sound and economically viable agriculture and its acceptance in the community. Mechanization and automation, structures and environment, labour and management, and energy and water are discussed.