Agricultural engineering

Article By:

Garrett, Roger E. Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of California, Davis, California.

Last reviewed:August 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.015500

Show previous versions

• Agricultural engineering, published August 2018:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader
• Agricultural engineering, published June 2014:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader

A discipline concerned with solving the engineering problems of providing food and fiber for the people of the world. The problems dealt with by agricultural engineering include designing agricultural machinery to work the soil and harvest crops, as well as developing water supplies for agriculture and systems for irrigating and draining land where necessary. Agricultural engineers design buildings in which to house animals or store grains. These engineers also work on myriad problems of processing, packaging, transporting, and distributing the food and fiber products. In these ways, agricultural engineering combines the disciplines of mechanical, civil, electrical, and chemical engineering with a basic understanding of biological sciences, agricultural practices, and available applicable technologies (see illustration). Concern for the properties of agricultural materials and the way the materials influence engineering designs also characterizes the agricultural engineering approach. See also: Agriculture; Engineering

The content above is only an excerpt.