Agricultural Equipment Names: 10 Machines and Innovations

The main agricultural equipment names to know are the tractor, plough, harrow, seeder or planter, sprayer, combine harvester, irrigation system, cultivator, monitoring tools and autonomous machines. Each one now carries a new layer of technology, such as auto-steer, section control, camera-based weeding or driverless kits. USDA research shows guidance systems were used on 58 percent of US corn acres by 2016, up from 5.3 percent in 2001, so the most widely adopted farm equipment innovation of the last two decades is already in the cab.

This guide explains what each machine does, what is new on it, who it suits, and what it costs to run. It also has a calculator to test whether owning a combine beats hiring a custom operator on your acres.

Agricultural equipment names at a glance

The table lists the ten machine groups covered below. The “What is new” column describes features you can buy from dealers, not concept machines.

The 10 agricultural equipment names, with what is new on each

We start with the machines every arable farm owns and finish with the newer technology that sits on top of them.

1. Tractor

The tractor is the power unit of the farm. It pulls tillage tools, drives a PTO shaft for mowers and balers, and lifts implements on its three-point hitch. Sizes run from compact two-wheel-drive models for small holdings to tracked machines above 500 horsepower for broadacre work.

The key change is guidance. A GPS receiver and a steering controller hold the tractor on a set line, so passes do not overlap or leave gaps. The USDA Economic Research Service report on precision agriculture found that auto-steer and guidance were used on 58 percent of planted corn acres in 2016, and estimates for 2019 put sorghum at 72.9 percent and cotton at 64.5 percent. Telematics now report engine hours, fuel use and location from the cab to a phone.

Best for: every farm with field work. Guidance pays back fastest on large, open fields where overlap waste adds up.

2. Plough (plow)

The mouldboard plough turns the topsoil over, buries crop residue and weed seeds, and leaves a rough surface for later passes. Chisel ploughs loosen soil without turning it. Many farms now plough less often to protect soil structure and save fuel, and use it mainly for breaking old pasture or fixing compaction.

New ploughs let the driver change working width and depth from the cab with hydraulics. That helps on fields with mixed soil types. For buying tips on second-hand tools, see our note on used tillage equipment trends.

Best for: heavy clay, sod breaking and organic systems that rely on tillage for weed control.

3. Harrow

A harrow works the top few inches after primary tillage. It breaks clods, levels the surface and makes a firm seedbed. There are three common types:

• Disc harrow: cuts residue and breaks large clods on heavy ground.
• Chain harrow: levels light soil and spreads manure on grassland.
• Tine harrow: pulls out small weeds and aerates the surface.

Newer models have hydraulic down-pressure on each section and folding frames above 40 feet wide, so one pass covers more ground with even depth.

Best for: seedbed finishing before cereals, oilseeds and pasture reseeding.

4. Seeder and planter

A seed drill or air seeder meters seed into narrow rows for wheat, barley and canola. A row-crop planter singulates seed for corn, soybeans and cotton, placing each one at a set depth and spacing. Even emergence is the goal, because late plants yield less.

Recent planters use electric motors on each row instead of chains. That allows row-by-row shut-off at headlands and variable seeding rates from a prescription map. The planter then logs where every seed went, which feeds later yield analysis.

Best for: row-crop growers who want the same plant stand across mixed soils.

5. Sprayer

Sprayers apply herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and liquid fertilizer. They come as trailed, mounted or self-propelled machines, and some farms hire drone spraying for small or wet fields where local rules allow it. Boom section control switches off nozzles over ground already treated.

The newer step is spot spraying. Cameras on the boom look for weeds and fire only the nozzle above each one. Swiss firm Ecorobotix raised $150 million in 2025 to scale its plant-by-plant ARA sprayer, which the company says cuts crop protection use by up to 95 percent (Future Farming, 2025). That is a maker’s figure; results on your farm depend on weed density. Always follow the product label and local rules for any chemical you apply.

Best for: large acreage and fields with patchy weed pressure.

6. Combine harvester

The combine cuts the crop, threshes grain from the head, separates straw and cleans the grain in one pass. Headers are swapped by crop: a draper or flex header for small grains and soybeans, a corn head for maize. Rotary and conventional (walker) designs are both sold.

New combines carry yield monitors, moisture sensors and cameras that adjust fan and sieve settings as conditions change. John Deere’s S7 series, for example, uses the same cab as its X9 flagship with AutoTrac guidance and turn automation (Future Farming). Combines are also the most expensive machine on many farms, which is why the calculator below focuses on them.

Best for: grain, oilseed and pulse farms with enough acres to keep the machine busy.

7. Irrigation system

Center pivots, linear moves, drip lines and sprinklers deliver water when rain falls short. Pivots dominate broadacre irrigation in the US Great Plains and in parts of Australia and South Africa; drip suits orchards, vines and vegetables.

Smart irrigation adds soil moisture probes, weather data and remote control from a phone. A grower can stop a pivot after rain without driving to the field. Variable-rate irrigation can also change the water rate along the pivot arm for different soils.

Best for: dry regions, sandy soils and high-value crops where water costs or limits are tight.

8. Cultivator

A row-crop cultivator runs between crop rows to cut weeds and loosen crusted soil. It is the main weed tool on organic farms and a backup to herbicides on conventional ones. Camera-guided hitches now shift the cultivator sideways so the blades stay close to the row without hitting the crop.

Laser weeding is the newest version. Carbon Robotics says its LaserWeeder G2 works twice as fast as the first model, using 240-watt lasers in place of 150-watt ones (Future Farming, 2025). On the sprayer side, CNH Industrial bought machine-vision firm Augmenta, whose camera system adjusts spray rates in real time.

Best for: vegetable and organic growers with high hand-weeding bills.

9. Monitoring tools

Monitoring tools tell the other machines where to act. They include yield monitors, soil electrical conductivity maps, in-field probes, drone images and satellite crop maps. USDA found yield maps, soil maps and variable-rate technology on only 5 to 25 percent of US winter wheat, cotton, sorghum and rice acres, far below guidance use. That gap is the cheapest place for many farms to start.

Satellite maps show crop vigor across every field every few days. A grower can see a weak zone, walk to it, and decide whether it needs fertilizer, drainage work or nothing. The Farmonaut Satellite + AI Farm Monitoring System is one such tool; it turns satellite images into field maps that can feed variable-rate prescriptions.

Best for: any farm size, including farms that do not own variable-rate equipment yet.

10. Autonomous and electric machines

Autonomous machines do field work without a driver in the seat. At CES 2025, John Deere showed a second-generation autonomy kit that uses cameras and computer vision on tractors for tillage and on other machines (Rental Equipment Register, 2025). Smaller electric robots for weeding and scouting are sold in Europe and North America, mainly for vegetables and vineyards.

Driverless machines still need people. A University of Illinois study found that states with more precision technology use also had more farm service technicians, and the US employed about 36,830 farm equipment mechanics and service technicians in 2023 (farmdoc daily, 2026). Check dealer support near you before you buy.

Best for: large farms short of seasonal labor, and specialty crops with repetitive tasks.

▶ How satellite crop maps create the zones that variable-rate equipment acts on. · 2:12

How fast farmers adopt new farm equipment

Adoption depends on farm size. USDA data show larger farms take up guidance first because the savings scale with acres. On the largest farms in its survey, guidance use reached 73 percent for corn in 2016, 82 percent for winter wheat in 2017, 68 percent for soybeans in 2018 and 67 percent for cotton in 2019. Even among the smallest cotton farms, half used it in 2019.

The lesson for a buyer: simple features like auto-steer spread fast. Newer tools such as variable-rate seeding and spot spraying spread slower, because the gain depends on how much your fields vary.

Chart

Guidance use on the largest US farms

% of planted acres, farms in the top two size quintiles, survey year in label

What modern agricultural equipment costs to run

New machines cost more than they did five years ago. A University of Illinois farmdoc analysis of the USDA NASS tractor price index found prices rose 21 percent from 2020 to 2023. The index went from 114 to 138 over those three years.

Chart

USDA tractor price index

Index of prices paid for tractors, 2020 to 2023

Those prices flow straight into per-acre costs. On central Illinois corn farms in the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management records, machinery-related costs rose from $136 per acre in 2021 to $171 in 2024, a 25 percent increase. Depreciation was the largest item, at $87 per acre in 2024. The same analysis lists the combine used in its cost model at $587,000 in 2021 and $741,000 in 2023 (list price).

Harvest is where scale matters most. The farmdoc team estimated corn combining at $43.40 per acre at 3,600 acres harvested in 2025, and noted clear cost disadvantages below about 3,000 acres per combine. Their options for smaller farms: share a combine with a neighbor, or hire custom harvesting.

Chart

Machinery costs per acre, central Illinois corn

$ per acre, 2021 vs 2024, high-productivity farmland

Own a combine or hire a custom operator?

Custom rates give a simple yardstick. The Manitoba Agriculture farm machinery custom and rental guide for 2026/27 lists average custom combining at $31 to $40 per acre (Canadian dollars; the guide says these are farmer-to-farmer cost-recovery guidelines, not commercial custom operator rates). Rental of a rotary combine runs $295 to $565 per hour in the same guide. Rates in your area may differ, so ask local operators.

Use the calculator to compare your own cost per acre with a custom rate. It spreads depreciation and interest over the acres you harvest each year, then adds your running costs. Enter your own numbers; the defaults are examples set close to break-even.

Try the numbers for your own farm below.

How to choose new farm equipment

1. Start with the job, not the brand. List the jobs that limit your yield or timing, such as late planting or weedy rows.
2. Count your acres per machine. Big machines pay back when they work enough hours. Below the break-even, rent, share or hire custom work.
3. Check what your tractor can run. Horsepower, hydraulic flow and ISOBUS compatibility decide which implements you can pull and control.
4. Buy data before hardware. Yield, soil or satellite maps show whether your fields vary enough to pay for variable-rate tools.
5. Ask about service. Find out how far the nearest technician is and how fast parts arrive in harvest.
6. Compare used and new. A late-model used machine with guidance often costs much less than new; check hours and service records.

For lending and insurance questions linked to a big purchase, get advice from your lender or a farm business adviser.

▶ Six plain steps to start precision agriculture without buying a robot. · 4:18

Safety rules that come with farm machinery

Tractor overturns and machine entanglement are among the serious farm hazards OSHA lists. In the US, the OSHA agricultural hazards guidance notes that tractors over 20 horsepower built after 25 October 1976 and run by a hired worker must have an approved roll-over protective structure (ROPS). OSHA also lists tractors and forage harvesters as common sources of harmful noise, and suggests sealed cabs and regular part replacement to cut it.

Driverless machines add new rules on remote supervision and field boundaries. Check your local regulations and the maker’s manual before running any machine without a driver.

Equipment and mechanization beyond North America

Farm equipment needs differ by region. The FAO and African Union framework on sustainable agricultural mechanization stresses hire services, local repair skills and machines sized to the farm, rather than bigger tractors alone. That advice also fits small and mid-size farms in Europe and Australia: shared ownership and contractors often beat buying a machine that sits idle.

▶ Seven green farming technologies that save water, fuel and fertilizer. · 2:24

How we chose these 10 machines

We grouped equipment by the field job it does, from soil preparation to harvest, and added the two technology groups that now sit across all of them: monitoring tools and autonomous machines. For each, we described features sold today and named sources for every figure. Cost data come from US and Canadian extension and university sources, dated in the text. Brand examples are for illustration, not endorsements.

Related pages on our site: fleet management, product traceability, carbon footprinting, crop loan and insurance, large-scale farm management, API developer docs, satellite API, web app, web app badge.

FAQ

What are the basic agricultural equipment names every farmer should know?

The core list is tractor, plough, harrow, seeder or planter, sprayer, combine harvester, irrigation system and cultivator. Many farms now add monitoring tools, such as yield or satellite maps, and some trial autonomous machines.

What is the most widely adopted farm equipment innovation?

Auto-steer and guidance. USDA reports they were on 58 percent of US corn acres by 2016 and on well over half the acres of six major crops in later surveys.

Is it cheaper to own a combine or hire custom harvesting?

It depends on acres. University of Illinois estimates show high per-acre costs below about 3,000 acres per combine. Compare your own cost with local custom rates using the calculator above.

Are autonomous tractors on sale now?

Makers sell guidance and turn automation widely, and some offer driverless kits and small robots in selected markets. Check what your local dealer supports and what local rules allow.

How can satellite monitoring help with farm equipment?

Satellite crop maps show which zones are weak or strong. That tells sprayers, spreaders and planters where to change rates, and helps you decide if variable-rate equipment is worth buying.