A Reasoned Evolutionary Study on the Actual Design of Farm Tractors

In some industrial sectors, such as the one concerning the manufacturing of agricultural machinery (farm tractors in particular), most recent innovations focus on improving specific technical sub-systems considered more or less strategic by manufacturers, end users or legislators, for example the engine (with the introduction of increasingly-efficient pollution-abatement systems) or the three-point hitch (with new controllers able to automatically adjust the operating height, thus maintaining a constant traction-effort on the tractor while tilling). The level of scale/detail, at which the three above-mentioned stakeholders are concentrating nowadays, is undoubtedly an indication of an industrially-mature product and, therefore, with a configuration optimised for the purposes it is intended to serve, but improvable on individual isolated subsystems. In reality, what we call “farm tractor” is the result of an evolutionary process that has led the current configuration to prevail in numerical terms over other proposals that have been made throughout the history, not necessarily worse on a technical level but certainly losing out on an economic level. It is an example of the so-called “dominant design”. In this article, the evolutionary history that has led the farm tractor to its current configuration(s) will be retraced, and explicit technical justifications will be given for the solutions that are currently adopted. The final aim of this study is: (1) understanding whether the motivations that led to the current design still exist and, in case, (2) individuating some novel or, even, simply forgotten design-solutions, which deserve to be present in the farm tractor of the future, possibly hybrid or robotic.