SIC 3523 Farm Machinery and Equipment
SIC 3523
This category covers establishments primarily manufacturing farm machinery and equipment, including wheel tractors, for use in the preparation and maintenance of the soil; planting and harvesting of the crop; preparing crops for market on the farm; or for use in performing other farm operations and processes. Included in this industry are establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing commercial mowing and other turf and grounds care equipment. Establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing farm handtools are classified as the Cutlery, Handtools, and General Hardware industries; and those manufacturing garden tractors, lawnmowers, and other lawn and garden equipment are classified in SIC 3524: Lawn and Garden Tractors and Home Lawn and Garden Equipment.
333111
Farm Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing
332323
Ornamental and Architectural Metal Work Manufacturing
332212
Hand and Edge Tool Manufacturing
333922
Conveyor and Conveying Equipment Manufacturing
In 2001 factory shipments of farm equipment (not including sales of consumer lawn mowers) from original equipment manufacturers totaled $6.2 billion. Of that total, harvest machinery and parts accounted for $2.1 billion; planting, seeding, and fertilizing machinery, $986.2 million; haying machinery, $804.8 million; farm dairy machines, sprayers, dusters, elevators, and farm blowers, $787.9 million; and plows, harrows, rollers, pulverizers, cultivators, and weeders, $515.9 million. Commercial equipment for grounds and turf care generated $2.0 billion.
After suffering through ups and downs in the market during the 1990s, the new decade brought its own set of challenges for the industry. Factors affecting the U.S. economy generally also play a significant role in the organization of this industry. Globalization and consolidation have allowed industry leaders to maintain growth or minimize losses in a poor domestic market. Other factors important to the stability of this industry include government subsidies of U.S. farms, relationships with equipment dealers, changing environmental emissions regulations, and the availability of raw materials.
The major expansion period for U.S. agriculture came during the late nineteenth century. A total of 408 million acres had been farmed prior to 1870, and in the next 30 years an additional 431 million acres were newly cultivated. As the scale of U.S. agriculture dramatically increased, so did its complexity, with locally oriented farmers later engaged in an international system of storing, shipping, and selling, engendered by increased mechanization, cash crops, and stock trading in commodities.
At the onset of these developments, the most significant role was played by the largest farming enterprises. Heralding increased mechanization, greater crop specialization, and a trend toward farming on a large scale, the 40,000-acre or more farms were run with military efficiency. The pace of mechanization was so rapid and extended into so many areas of farming technology that in 1860 alone, the U.S. Patent Office issued new patents for corn shellers, corn huskers, corn cultivators, corn-shock binders, cornstalk shocking machines, cornstalk cutters, corn cleaners, corn and cob crushers, seed drills, corn harvesters, rotary harrows, corn and cob mills, smut machines, and hundreds of corn planters.
The types of plows used since the earliest development of agriculture proved to be unsuitable in dense, heavy prairie, so new designs were essential. A first step came in the form of an adaptation of Jethro Wood's 1814 iron plow, a "prairie breaker" that was very heavy, clogged easily, and moved slowly, even when pulled by a team of oxen. In 1837, a blacksmith in Grand Detour, Illinois, developed the first "singing plow" by combining a wrought iron moldboard with a steel share scavenged from a broken band saw, enabling a far more thorough and clog-free scouring of the prairie. By the 1850s, this blacksmith was manufacturing approximately 10,000 examples of his invention annually at his mass-production plant in Moline, Illinois.
But better plows alone were not sufficient for all the needs of American farmers during the rapid escalation of agriculture in the late nineteenth century. Other key developments included design improvements for tractors, harrows, corn planters, and combine harvesters.
Though Hart and Parr Charles were responsible for pioneering the gasoline tractor in 1901, most American farmers were unable to afford the new machine until the advent of Henry Ford's Fordson tractor in 1917, priced at $397. A critical new development came seven years later with International Harvester's Farmall tractor, a highly versatile machine due to its innovative addition of removable attachments.
During the nineteenth century, harrows rapidly became stronger and more complex. Before the introduction of the tractor, these had to be dragged by animals. The first designs of hoes and brush harrows were outmoded in the 1840s by the Geddes, a hinged triangular construction of wood with teeth made of iron, which, in turn, was outmoded several decades later by an all iron and steel model. This design was later outmoded by a harrow called the Nishwitz rotary disk harrow, which through rollers or clod-crushers, sifted and tamped down the soil.
The planting of corn was both time-consuming and inaccurate until technological advances permitted the mechanization of the planting and the measuring involved as well. In Galesburg, Illinois in the 1850s, George W. Brown pioneered a semi-mechanized method of corn...
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