Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 4:
Average annual working hours (h) of agricultural machinery.
Year
Tractors
Harvesters
Irrigation
Machinery
Other Machinery
1996
56.33
87.19
217.24
165.70
1997
54.31
85.94
227.71
161.50
1998
55.07
91.48
195.59
163.48
1999
51.88
92.38
176.55
152.45
2000
49.58
89.13
158.42
144.64
2001
49.07
92.53
153.42
142.90
2002
47.49
91.69
143.85
137.53
2003
47.42
98.06
134.68
137.14
2004
46.29
101.17
134.90
133.55
2005
45.40
103.76
129.25
129.93
2006
44.45
107.22
127.96
126.28
2007
43.33
106.57
120.87
122.59
2008
42.38
107.16
115.53
118.86
2009
41.60
106.56
113.22
116.30
2010
41.00
105.65
109.06
114.43
Due to the effect of actual workloads, working hours of the tractors,
irrigation machinery and other machinery continue to decline from 1996
to 2010. The harvesting machinery is the only one whose working hours
have increased. This means that the total power of the agricultural machin-
ery (excluding harvesters) grew faster than the actual workloads. Subsi-
dies policy for purchasing agricultural machines upon 2004 results in the
massive growth of the agricultural machinery at the expense of the waste
of partial production capacity. Furthermore, economic life of most agri-
cultural machinery does not exceed 15 years in China and a large number
of scrapped agricultural machinery need to be recycle every year. Chinese
energy policy maker should pay attention to this problem. Some materi-
als such as aluminum and steel, are easily recyclable and thus their post-
consumer recycling takes much less energy than production of fi nished
materials from virgin feedstocks [24,25].
