Agricultural machinery is the set of tractors and combine harvesters that do the heavy work on a farm. A tractor pulls and powers other tools, such as a plough or a seed drill. A combine cuts a crop and separates the grain in one pass. In a village, a tractor is often the most expensive machine a family owns. India sells more tractors each year than any other country.
Most Indian farms are small, so one machine often serves several families. A farmer may hire a tractor or a combine by the hour or the day from a neighbour, or from a custom hiring centre, instead of buying one. The big combines used for the wheat harvest are mostly hired in this way.
Farm machines are sold through independent dealers, as described under selling through partners. The dealer also services the machine and supplies spare parts. A tractor is used hard for many years, so parts and service give the maker and dealer income long after the sale, as explained under service after the sale.
Software has changed these machines in three ways. First, telematics devices report where the tractor is, how many hours it has worked and what faults it has. The dealer uses this to plan service. Second, machine control steers the tractor by GPS, so that rows are straight to within a few centimetres and no part of the field is covered twice. Third, some tractors can work with no driver at all.
Here is a typical case. A farmer in Punjab uses a GPS-steered tractor to sow wheat. The farmer does not hold the steering wheel. The tractor follows a path set in advance, and the farmer watches the seed drill. Another system, precision spraying, uses cameras to spot weeds and sprays only them.
Agricultural machinery is one of the groups in heavy equipment, next to construction equipment. Mines and flyover sites use construction equipment. Many of the world's tractor makers have large engineering centres in India.