**7. Conclusion**

This chapter provided a comprehensive review of the soil compaction problem. The historical aspects, the mechanism, and the environmental implications of soil compaction were discussed. A large off-road vehicle maneuvering with a draft load causes the soil beneath each point to compact, until it can support the imposed load in both the vertical and horizontal directions. Different vehicle designs have advantages and disadvantages in addressing the soil compaction problem. The track versus tires debate continues to this day, and the farmer's choice should depend on their specific situation. Sophisticated farm management practices can significantly reduce soil compaction in the mid-term. Farmers risk losing 50% of their expected profits, when the soil compaction is not addressed in a sustainable way. Farmers and policymakers are encouraged to work toward reducing and reversing soil compaction for sustainable management of agricultural lands.

The issue of soil compaction is not one that will ever cease to exist. It will continue to cause trouble for those in agriculture, construction, mining, and other industries that deal with soil and ground working. As such, it is important that an understanding of the impact of soil compaction is continually being disseminated into these industries, as well as the basic management practices that can help to prevent an extensive spread of the problem. For design engineers in these fields, soil compaction offers the potential for the continued improvement in equipment design. Looking specifically at agriculture, the on-going trend of increasing equipment size and capacity in order to improve fuel and energy sustainability indicates that there will be a continued demand to further reduce the equipment loading and improve soil interaction of crop machinery, in order to maintain an adequate level of soil compaction minimization. The design of tillage equipment has already come a long way from the moldboard plow, specifically in terms of minimizing soil disturbed unnecessarily, while maximizing the implement's capacity to pulverize the soil aggregates within the seed-bed. Moving forward, tillage equipment's most likely challenge will be ensuring adequate wheel support during operation, without causing additional soil loading and compaction forces.

Farm managers must recognize that the prevention of unnecessary soil compaction is of paramount interest in the long-term productivity of their resources. They need to adopt a continuous improvement attitude and do whatever is feasible to minimize compaction. The seemingly small benefits of tillage cycling, crop rotation, and cover cropping should not be overlooked, since these practices continue to prevent soil compaction and reduce equipment traffic in the fields. As with many other aspects of off-road vehicle and machine design, committing to improving the performance of all factors will increase the effectiveness of the soil compaction control and prevention areas. Because the ability to sustainably grow food is critical to humanity's future, agricultural engineers of the 21st century with a working knowledge of soil compaction phenomena will continue to be in high demand.
