Farm Power & Machinery

Traditional and improved Hoes

• The hoe is a versatile form of implement used for many operations, i.e. seed bed preparation, ridge making, channel shaping and weeding. It is also used for removing plant roots, harvesting root crops and thinning drilled crops. The two common types of hoes used by Indian farmers are hand hoes and animal drawn hoes.
• Hand hoes are used to cultivate small area of land by human labour. Among the indigenous types of hand hoes, the Kodali (narrow spade) is the most popular one. Kodali is similar to a phawara (broad spade), the difference being that instead of a wide thin cutting blade, a narrow long pointed thicker section blade is attached to the handle. The person working with it has to bend his body. It is used for inter cultivating maize and sugarcane crops, and for earthing up the potato crops sown in lines. About 0.04 hectare can be covered in a day by one man. An improved hand hoe is operated in the standing position. It is provided with a long handle fitted in the middle of the cutting blade. One end of the blade is about 10 cm wide sharp edge and the other end is pointed narrow one for making small furrows. It can be used for cultivating and weeding very close to the individual plant.
  
• The Grubber is a manual pull type hoe suitable for weeding and inter culture of upland row crops in black cotton soil regions. It is provided with 3 blades and the field capacity is 0.005 ha per hour.