Articles

ARTICLES 1. Transfer of technology.Because of thought-leadership and the innovative products designed and developed by engineers in the Trantor tractor team, this website focuses on the transfer of our innovative technology, to overseas partners seeking new products to manufacture.Our aim is to support countries wishing to build their new industrialisation on farm machinery, so as to achieve improved farm mechanisation and to increase food production. As populations increase, the ability to grow sufficient crops and to create skilled and un-skilled jobs is usually high on the list of priorities.In Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, the FSU and North and South America, the twin problems of food production and job creation are main concerns of governments.

  • We recognise that the future for the farmers of the world is very different from the past. The practice of deep-ploughing has been highly productive in most countries, but now a completely different new system is required - and has arrived
  • The new system is called Conservation Agriculture (CA) and involves direct seeding and zero tillage and no ploughing at all
  • The new system is designed to be both sustainable and to direct its attention to the conservation of the world’s natural resources.

Some concerns are:

  • better soil-management,
  • a recognition that input costs, e.g. fuel and chemicals, have become very expensive,
  • water availability has become scarce,
  • and the well-accepted practices of ploughing have severely damaged the finite soil of the world.

The major manufacturers in the farm machinery world are currently producing equipment designed for the “illustrious” history of ploughing-focused tillage. The innovative Trantor team has:

  • been the world’s pioneers in designing and manufacturing of a fully-suspended farm tractor with a top speed of (80kph/50mph)
  • been the world’s pioneers (along with Mercedes Benz) of improved tractor and trailer braking on all wheels of the tractor and trailer.
  • has followed the path of “design for efficient crop-transportation” (with trailers), rather than creating a “ploughing-first” tractor like all others.
  • been considered as world leaders of low-draught (and transportation), as PDF brochure ‘E’‘ Work Task Analysis’ (WTA) indicates. These tasks clearly consume much more time (on farms worldwide), than ploughing and heavy cultivation tasks.
  • appreciated the needs of village-based farmers worldwide who also need their farm tractor to carry people, and to conduct this task regularly, speedily and with low fuel-consumption.
  • has created a light-weight farm tractor range that could provide a huge contribution to reducing fuel-consumption across the farming world, by addressing the power to weight ratio, engine specification and creating a unique transmission design for tractors required for the future of No-till farming.  

2. On-Farm Energy Reduction in a World Context.Our objective is to lead the way in making massive reductions to the amount of energy used on farms worldwide, and in doing so make a significant contribution to reducing emission levels, thus easing problems resulting from climate change.The 32 million farmers that operate their tractors on a daily basis are:-

  • wasting lots of energy,
  • operating inefficiently by adopting primary cultivation (ploughing-based tillage),
  • using far too many expensive chemicals (created with the intensive use of oil), often wasting the natural and valuable water-based moisture (particularly in arid lands),
  • using wheeled tractors that are needlessly heavy and when working with heavy agricultural implements [that enter the soil far too deeply], the increase in input costs to farmers is obvious.

Whilst addressing the above issues relating to new no-till systems, the transportation of 7000 million tonnes of the world’s crops is not only inefficient in its use of costly labour, but it is also often unsafe (due to poor braking standards), creates spinal problems for tractor drivers (due to the absence of suspension) and also consumes far too much energy (expensive diesel-fuel). The whole combination is a historical (actually hysterical) system of farming that has no place in a world of sustainable farming where food security is a vital matter.It is clear that food production has to increase significantly in many countries. Rising populations, in some key countries mean that self-sufficiency in food production has to be a primary goal of governments.It is our innovative low-weight, fully-suspended, properly-braked, passenger-carrying farm tractor that enables the farmers of the world to have high productivity for all work tasks, whilst also saving vast quantities of energy by reducing fuel-consumption significantly.If it is good enough for the future of the Airbus then it is certainly a matter for the world’s farmers and the farm equipment industry to contemplate.The Trantor tractor was born out of a school of engineering manufacture in a city that is known for its development of industrialisation…some time back.In the modern world, development issues not only concern food security but also job-creation.Creating industries and making things is a key part of job-creation.For some countries, the link between increased food production and industrial development needs to be given a particularly high priority. The Japanese (JICA) mission plan for Kenya is a practical example, whilst the UNIDO book, "Agro-Industries for Development", explains the linkages between agriculture and industrial development.Our team of analytical engineers have been working, for some years to develop a visionary concept concerned with farm tractor and ag-implement combinations related to:

  • efficiency of on-farm product use, and
  • how best to integrate ag-machinery combinations with existing manufacturing and assembly systems in various countries.