Agricultural Cutting Tools

Large Automated Grass-Cutting Tools

• Gasoline-powered agricultural cutting tools are used for harvesting crops like grass. These trimmings serve many purposes in agriculture, including protecting crops from cold and inhibiting weed growth, making compost for enriching soil and feeding livestock. Automated, self-propelled agricultural cutting tools with integral power units, steering and wheels vary in size, depending on the area to be harvested. Some models of these machines feature seats for operators and are known as "sit-on" or "ride-on" models. Larger gasoline-powered lawnmowers use 4-stroke combustion engines; the smaller models feature 2-stroke engines. These machines also contribute to air pollution; the EPA advises, "Operating a typical gasoline-powered lawn mower for one hour produces the same amount of smog-forming hydrocarbons as driving an average car almost 200 miles under typical driving conditions."

Traditional Agricultural Crop-Cutting Tool

• The sickle, known as the kama in Japan, is one of the world's oldest agricultural cutting tools. The name of the sickle comes from the Latin word, "secula" from "secare," meaning, "to cut." This medium-size hand tool features a razor-sharp crescent-shaped, curved blade mounted on the end of a short wooden handle. Its multiple uses include cutting down weeds and trimming grasses around paths and beds as well as cutting, or harvesting, crops such as corn, green vegetables and flowers. To maintain a sickle in top condition, the finely-honed blade requires frequent sharpening with a diamond file or hard whetstone.

Traditional Agricultural Weed-Cutting Tool

• The class of agricultural implements known as hoes are used for cutting down weeds where the use of chemical weed inhibitors are undesirable or not economically viable. This tool, also known as an eye hoe, or farmer's hoe, is also one of the most common agricultural tools used throughout the world. A hoe is a large hand tool featuring a long wooden handle with a sharp, flat blade at one end, mounted at a right angle to the handle. Uses for this tool include cutting out shapes in turf for new flowerbeds, reshaping the boarders of older beds and cutting weeds in half by passing through the soil just below the surface while weeding or tilling ground for planting.

Large Weed-Cutting Tools

• Keeping weeds from ruining crops is a major part of agricultural work. Organic farmers use reapers, cultivators and mowers to replace the function of pesticides on their land. Cultivators are large tools with cutting knives, drawn by tractors. They feature a tool bar attached by a three-point hitch to the towing vehicle, usually a tractor, and are used by farmers for jobs like cutting down weeds between rows of plants. Sweeps, the part of a cultivator that slices through weeds, come in several varieties, including a three-piece sweep, Alabama shovel and a one-piece sweep.