Farm Power & Machinery Management 3(2+1)

Lesson 1. Role of Mechanization in Indian Agriculture

Agriculture occupies an important place in Indian economy.  It produces sufficient food to meet the needs of a teeming population and even to export it. The spectacular rise in agricultural production in the last four decades is largely a result application of new technology, increased use of improved seeds, chemicals and fertilizers, irrigation and mechanization, coupled with incentives for production and greater access to credit. This has put Indian agriculture in world ranking (Table 1).

Table 1: Global Ranking of India in farm production & productivity.

Crop	Production Rank	Productivity Rank
Paddy	2nd	12th
Wheat	2nd	9th
Maize	6th	15th
Total cereals	3rd	36th
Groundnut	2nd	12th
Rapeseeds	4th	28th
Pulses	1st	44th
Potato	3rd	26th
Sugarcane	2nd	9th
Fruits	2nd (10.5% share)	-
Vegetables	2nd (9.7% share)	-
Tractor in use	4th	-

India has made remarkable progress in the development of Agricultural Mechanization technology. The fact that Indian agriculture was powered by about 185 million agricultural workers, 71 million draught animals, over 12 million motors and engines and 1.2 million tractors during the year in 1990-91 (Table 2). This figure changed to about 243 million agricultural workers, 53 million draught animals, over 25 million motors and engines, and 4 million tractors during the year 2009-10 reflects the unique Indian approach to mechanization. Nearly 36% of the power in agriculture was contributed by inanimate power sources in 1984-85, which reduced to 24% in 1994-95 and further reduced to 13% in 2009-10.

Farm mechanization status is often expressed in terms of power availability per unit area of any country. The total farm power availability in 1975-76 was 0.48 kW/ha, which has increased to 1.73 kW/ha in 2009-10 (Table 3). As the power availability increased on Indian farms, cropping intensity increased and side-by-side cropping pattern also changed. Now the more emphasis is being given on oil seeds & pulses, fruits and vegetable crops, hill agriculture, plantation crops and crops for diversification from rice-wheat to maize, cotton, sugarcane etc. The average supply of power to agriculture should be increased to 2.0 kW/ha by the year 2015 to achieve the planned production level. Appropriate and selective mechanization of production agriculture, post-harvest management and value addition using a proper blend of conventional and renewable energy sources facilitates in enhancing productivity.  Estimated contributions of improved agricultural tools and equipment in augmenting total food production of India and other relevant parameters are given in Table 3. During the past four decades a large number of farm tools, implements and machines have been developed for different farm operations such as land leveling, seed bed preparation, sowing and planting, weeding and hoeing, plant protection, harvesting, threshing, dehusking, decorticating, etc. The rate of growth, however in animal operated machinery has remained low as compared to tractor or power operated machinery. Table 4 indicates the level of mechanization of farm operations in India. The other benefits of agricultural mechanization i.e. the contribution of mechanization are given in Table 5. 

 

Table 2: Status of farm power sources in India.  

Year	Agril Workers		Draft Animals		Tractors		Power Tillers		Diesel Engines		Electric Motors
	Number (million)	Power (million kW)	Number (million)	Power (million kW)	Number (million)	Power (million kW)	Number (million)	Power (million kW)	Number (million)	Power (million kW)	Number (million)	Power (million kW)
1960-61	131.10	5.8	80.4	30.6	0.037	1.00	0	0	0.230	1.298	0.200	0.74
1970-71	125.70	6.21	82.6	31.39	0.168	4.38	0.0096	0.054	1.7	9.52	1.6	5.92
1980-81	148.0	7.46	73.4	27.89	0.531	13.86	0.0162	0.091	2.88	16.13	3.35	12.39
1990-91	185.30	9.17	70.9	26.94	1.192	31.11	0.0323	0.181	4.8	26.88	8.07	29.86
1999-00	206.19	10.6	60.0	22.8	2.369	61.83	0.1046	0.586	5.9	33.04	12.85	47.55
2000-01	213.83	10.7	60.3	22.9	2.531	66.06	0.1147	0.642	6.226	34.86	13.25	49.03
2001-02	234.09	10.9	59.3	22.5	2.643	68.98	0.1232	0.690	6.523	36.53	13.601	50.32
2002-03	235.26	11.1	58.4	22.2	2.736	71.41	0.1333	0.747	7.053	39.5	13.921	51.51
2003-04	236.44	11.2	57.5	21.8	2.855	74.52	0.1449	0.811	7.028	39.36	14.21	52.58
2004-05	237.62	11.4	56.5	21.5	2.992	78.09	0.1555	0.871	7.595	42.53	14.467	53.53
2005-06	238.81	11.47	55.8	21.2	3.153	82.29	0.1659	0.929	7.627	42.71	14.75	54.57
2006-07	240.00	11.63	54.9	20.86	3.37	87.96	0.1785	1.000	7.822	43.8	15.054	55.7
2007-08	241.00	11.7	54.0	20.52	3.553	92.73	0.1921	1.076	7.900	44.24	15.8	58.46
2008-09	242.21	12.10	53.32	20.26	3.689	96.28	0.2221	1.244	8.173	45.77	16.203	59.95
2009-10	243.42	12.17	52.65	20.01	3.915	102.18	0.2571	1.439	8.456	47.35	16.616	61.48

 

Note:      1 Human = 0.05 kW, Draught animal = 0.38 kW, Tractor = 26.1 kW, Power tiller = 5.6 kW;

                    Electric motor = 3.7 kW, Diesel engine = 5.6 kW

 

Table 3: Cropping intensity and power availability on Indian farms

Year	Cropping intensity (%)	Food grain productivity (t/ha)	Power available (kW/ha)	Power per unit production (kW/t)	Net sown area per tractor (ha)
1975-76	120	0.944	0.48	0.51	487
1985-86	127	1.175	0.73	0.62	174
1995-96	130	1.491	1.05	0.70	84
2004-05	135	1.652	1.47	0.89	47
2005-06	136.4	1.715	1.50	1.02	45
2006-07	138.1	1.756	1.54	1.01	42
2007-08	138.7	1.860	1.62	0.87	40
2008-09	139.02	1.909	1.67	0.87	38
2009-10	139.22	1.798	1.73	0.96	36

 

Table 4: Level of mechanization

S. No.	Operation	Percentage
1	Tillage Tractor Animal	40.2 15.6 24.7
2	Sowing with seed drill/seed-ferti-drill Tractor Animal	28.9 8.3 20.6
3	Irrigation	37
4	Thresher wheat Paddy and others	47.8 4.4
5	Harvesting: Reaper Combine	0.56 0.37
6	Plant protection	34.2

 

Table 5: Contribution of Agricultural Mechanization

Benefits	Value
Saving in seed Saving in fertilizer Saving in time Reduction in labours Increase in cropping intensity Higher productivity	15-20% 15-20% 20-30% 20-30% 5-20% 10-15%

 

Mechanization of Horticulture Crops: Horticulture is the key area for diversification of agriculture in this region. Equipment for mechanization of orchard crops for pit making, transplanting of saplings, spraying, pruning, harvesting of fruits etc need to be identified/imported/designed, manufactured, introduced and popularized. Vegetable crop production needs to be mechanized. There is very little mechanization except for the potato crop. Equipment for seedbed preparation is available. However, equipment for planting, transplanting of seedlings, row cultivation, irrigation, spraying, harvesting, picking/digging need to be introduced by importing, modifying, designing and manufacturing. Use of plastic mulch reduces water requirement and checks weed growth.  Equipment for laying plastic mulch, low plastic tunnels for cultivation of vegetables, cut flowers etc are required to be introduced and popularized. Green house technology has good scope in India for growing seedlings, flowers, high value off-season vegetables and some fruit crops. This technology needs to be promoted as a part of diversification efforts.  Equipment for mechanization of cultivation in green houses needs to be introduced and popularized. R&D efforts need to be intensified. The futuristic farm equipment e.g. Vegetable precision drills and seedling transplanters, Vegetable harvesters and diggers for root crops are needed for this zone.

Mechanization of Hill agriculture: The hilly terrains in many areas though having heavy rainfall face acute shortage of water both for human beings and plants. Ironically, most of the operations are done manually with age old hand tools. Scarcity of moisture due to quick runoff necessities introduction of efficient, light and low cost powered tools and machinery to improve timeliness of field operations. Plot size (generally less than 10 x 10 m), undulating terrain, growing crop on bench terraces, coupled with economic conditions, are major bottlenecks in use of mechanical power in the hilly regions. Women folk constitute major working hands in hill agriculture. Except ploughing, all other operations are performed by women mainly. Efficient, hand tools and light power machinery, capable of doing operations from tillage to threshing, are required keeping women-machine anthropometric data in mind. The valley areas of hills are fit for introducing power tillers of 8-12 hp and even tractors of lower horsepower with matching equipment.

Agricultural mechanization and engineering technology are slated to play a pivotal role for the success of the Indian agriculture to bring about a turn-around in agriculture in this region. There is growing trend to introduce higher horsepower tractors (> 40 kW and above). This trend is influenced by the emerging trend for custom hiring, contract farming and to reduce the cost of cultivation. Contract farming is essential to produce raw materials for agro-processing units proposed to be set-up in rural areas. This trend is to be encouraged, as it would save the farmers from graving indebtedners by spending heavily in acquiring expensive machinery like tractors, sprayers, combine-harvesters etc. This would also call for revising the agricultural credit policy, which requires mortgaging of land to get the loans. This policy deprives the small farmers, landless laborers and unemployed youths from getting loans for buying the tractors and other machines for custom-hiring jobs. Indian farmers have adopted mechanization inputs especially, irrigation, tractor, and threshing. Custom Hiring of mechanization inputs is getting popular for which high capacity machines need to be developed. Agriculture Service Centres need to be developed in rural areas for marketing and service supports of inputs including engineering inputs. Quality of Machines need to be improved through material selection and manufacturing.