Abstract: With the promotion of modern agricultural policies, the degree of mechanization in the process of agricultural production operations is getting higher and higher, and the design and research and development of modern agricultural machinery equipment cannot be separated from the digital design of computers, and the function parameters of different crops and materials in different working conditions of agricultural machinery production and operation stages are quite different, which is the difficulty of digital design of agricultural machinery. As a computer simulation method with discontinuous hypothesis, the discrete element method can use the characteristics of the discrete element method to carry out computer simulation analysis based on the requirements in agricultural machinery design. By expounding the basic theoretical concepts and common software of discrete element method, the research progress of discrete element method at home and abroad is summarized, and the limitations and future development trend of discrete element method are summarized. In order to promote the application of discrete element method in agricultural machinery and promote the development of discrete element software in the agricultural field, this paper provided a new reference and idea.