A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999

of an Alternative Wildlife Resource Management

TitlPreliminary Tractor Buying

Systems analysis, is controlled only by the problem at hand. The following tractor problem suggests a small, concrete, relevant problem common to areas such as refuges where wildlife management is practiced. Consider buying a tractor -- making the decision to purchase can be viewed as a system. I will simplify but you know the pattern by now: What do you want the tractor to do? What are the objectives for it?

Here you specify or think through the work load, days required, acres involved, equipment to be pulled, etc. You want a machine that will do "X things." What are the inputs you will need to decide? (You would probably pick Bunt's (1964) Farm Power and Machinery Management off the shelf for assistance.) Assuming the decision has been made to buy a tractor, which is a decision process in itself, you will probably clarify your objective saying that you want a tractor that minimizes the annual cost of tractor power in horsepower units. In order to do this you need inputs or some information about the following:

1. crop yields per acre
2. crop processing costs (like baling of hay)
3. tons of fertilizer to be applied
4. fixed cost percentage of service life
5. hours of field work
6. hours of transport work
7. hours of processing work
8. value for power
9. cost of labor per hour
10. distance of daily transport to work site
11. constants characteristic of tractor implements and
12. others

The process used would be a shrewd bit of farming horse-sense, but the scientific-minded manager would probably guess and then test his guess (hypothesis) against the clear-cut, cook-book calculations of Hunt (1964:215-217). He would then order his tractor based on his best judgment, justifying to the purchase agent, if necessary, why he does in fact need the model and size specified (and can even calculate the losses caused by a fickle purchasing agent, of which there are a few, who selects the wrong machine).

He then secures the tractor, runs it, tests his conclusions, and makes observations to improve his success in completing similar equations with improved data. This is the feed-back job. A systems approach to national duck population analyses or to local tractor buying, or to cutting down on paper work in a wildlife region is all the same. Securing the right inputs -- using or processing them wisely -- articulating and gaining the objective -- and then evaluating and improving the objective and practices all along the line amount to eventual, bit-by-bit improvement of that entire thing called wildlife management.

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision July 20, 2000.