Performances of Multifunctional Farming Bulldozer in Indonesia

Abstract

Farming bulldozer (FB) is a heavy-duty machine made by Komatsu designed explicitly for multipurpose operations in broad land types, from extremely dry to wet/swamplands. FB is a bulldozer but uses a wider crawler so that it’s Ground Pressure (GP) is about half compared to 4W tractor. The tested FB was D21PL-8 type having GP 0.19 kgf/cm2, Flywheel HP 32.4 kW 44 PS@2450 rpm, Operating Weight 4815 kg. Attached with associated implements, FB can do land clearing and leveling, land plowing and harrowing, soil puddling, subsoil draining, direct seeding, and harvesting. Tested fields are in the provinces of West Java (wet/dryland, South Sumatra (wetland), South Kalimantan (wetland), South Sulawesi (dry/wetland), West Papua (dry/wetland) and East Nusa Tenggara (dryland). In general, FB can do precise leveling in a range of ±15mm in 0.15-ha tested paddy field. Worktime for plowing continued with puddling is 4.97 hours/ha and harrowing continued with puddling is 5.15 hours/ha while for hand tractor in both cases is more than 13 hours/ha. It means FB can reduce work time up to 60%. In term of yield, there is no significant difference with hand tractor, which ranges from 6 t/ha to 7 t/ha. In conclusions, FB can do many tasks of land cultivations, cover a wider area of any land types, reduce labor numbers and cost, and increase planting intensity. Further testing to find the optimal size of land, operation and maintenance costs and impacts on the economy, society, and environment are still underway.