Measured machine energy requirements for grain production systems

An instrumented 72 kW diesel tractor was used to measure draft and energy requirements for grain production systems on coastal plains soils. Fuel requirements for chisel and moldboard plowing ranged from 7.7 to 18.9 L/ha and 15.5 to 30.7 L/ha, respectively. The tillage operations using a tandem disk harrow and pulvamulcher required 4.0 to 10.9 L/ha. For corn production, the adoption of no-tillage could result in a fuel savings of 20 L/ha. The fuel requirements through planting for small grain systems ranged from 6.1 to 22.9 L/ha.