Ethics of the future agricultural mechanization development

The overarching challenges for agriculture and thus also for agricultural engineers are to contribute to long term food safety and security (including a fair access to food for everybody) as well as to sustainable primary food production. Agricultural engineers generally as well as (new) agricultural technologies (further jointly referred to as agricultural engineering) must comply with economical, ecological and social requirements and mitigate social unbalance in different parts of the world. For this, agricultural engineering must contribute to increase the level of agricultural mechanization esp. in developing countries. Furthermore, it is a core task of agricultural engineering to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The European association of agricultural equipment and machinery producers (CEMA) has defined "Producing More with Less" as a guiding principle for agricultural engineering1