 thumb|300px|a sowing machine which uses the seed drill concept a 'seed drill' is a sowing device that precisely positions seeds in the soil and then covers them. before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by hand. besides being wasteful, planting was very imprecise and led to a poor distribution of seeds, leading to low productivity.  jethro tull is widely thought of as having invented the seed drill, though earlier the sumerians used a single-tube seed drill, and the chinese had also used a multi-tube seed drill.  the use of a seed drill can improve the ratio of crop yield (seeds harvested per seed planted) by as much as nine times. ==history==  while the babylonians used primitive single-tube seed drills around 1500 bc, the invention never reached europe. multi-tube iron seed drills were invented by the chinese in the 2nd century bc.history channel, where did it come from? episode: "ancient china: agriculture"temple, p.25 this multi-tube seed drill has been credited with giving china an efficient food production system that allowed it to support its large population for millennia. this multi-tube seed drill may have been introduced into europe following contacts with china.history channel, where did it come from? episode: "ancient china: agriculture"temple, p.25 the first known european seed drill was attributed to camillo torello and patented by the venetian senate in 1566. a seed drill was described in detail by tadeo cavalina of bologna in 1602. in england, the seed drill was further refined by jethro tull in 1701 in the agricultural revolution. however, seed drills of this and successive types were both expensive and unreliable, as well as fragile. seed drills would not come into widespread use in europe until the mid-19th century. over the years, seed drills became larger and more sophisticated, but the technology remained substantially the same. early drills were small enough to be pulled by a single horse, and many of these remained in use into the 1930s. the availability of steam, and later gasoline tractors, however, saw the development of larger and more efficient drills that allowed 
Agricultural_machinery Chinese_inventions English_inventions Habitat_management_equipment_and_methods Horticultural_techniques