The directives on the Sixth Five-Year Plan for the National Economy of the USSR (1956-1960), approved by the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, called for a further increase in agricultural labor productivity, output, efficiency, and marketable production through the application of the latest technologies, widespread electrification, and the mechanization and automation of all branches and production processes in agriculture. Consequently, the further development and improvement of the energy base of agriculture, together with the increasingly broad application of automatic monitoring of production processes and product quality, as well as the automatic control of these processes, acquired particular importance. From November to December 1954, the Institute of Automatics and Remote Control Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, with the participation of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, and the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, convened a broad conference devoted to the automation of agricultural production processes. More than 300 delegates attended, representing over 90 different organizations from more than 20 cities throughout the Soviet Union, including research and educational institutions, machine-tractor stations, design and production organizations, and technical administrations of various ministries. At the plenary session and two specialized sections (the Section on the Automation of Machines and Production Processes and the Section on the Automation of Power Installations and Electrical Equipment), 69 scientific papers and presentations were delivered and discussed on the automation of various production processes in agriculture and related sectors of the national economy. The proceedings of that conference are published in this volume. Automation represents the highest stage of mechanization. While it had already achieved widespread development in industry, it remained at an initial stage in agriculture. Naturally, automatic control was at that time applied primarily in those branches of agriculture that were either already highly mechanized or, by their nature, closely resembled industrial production, making it possible to employ industrial automation methods and equipment without major structural modifications. The volume provides its most comprehensive and detailed treatment of the automation of rural power stations, electrical networks, and water-management facilities. Other agricultural processes receive less extensive coverage, and some reports and articles dealing with their automation are exploratory in nature, representing preliminary research and development rather than exhaustive studies. In certain cases, the views expressed at the conference concerning methods and means of automating specific production processes were intended as subjects for discussion. The materials contained in this volume are far from covering all issues related to automation. Nevertheless, given that the automation of agricultural production processes was only beginning to be addressed in published literature for the first time, the editorial board hopes that this collection will prove useful to specialists working in the fields of agricultural mechanization and automation.