Jitendra, a prosperous farmer from Machrauli in Haryana, had barely hired a combine to harvest wheat on his 10-acre plot when clouds started building up. The weather office had predicted rains over the following days and harvesting the crop was Jitendra’s top priority. A delay would mean a wait of at least a week, besides the risk of the grain getting discoloured.

In a little over three hours, the combine harvested the entire crop, and the grain was transferred to godowns. Had Jitendra relied on manual labour, it would have taken at least ten workers four days to complete the same task. Besides being more expensive, Jitendra would have had to struggle to get enough labourers in time and would have had to bear the risk of the harvested crop lying in the open.

In Abohar, in neighbouring Punjab, farmer Vikas Rai is waiting for his wheat crop to mature so he can begin harvesting it. This year, the prolonged winter, coupled with the unseasonal rain caused by western disturbances, has delayed the harvest of wheat in states such as Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Rai is counting on his mechanised set-up to reap the crop and get the farm ready in time for cotton planting from May. For a farmer to get better yields, the cotton crop has to be planted within a stipulated time frame.

The frequent climatic variations in recent years are increasingly posing a risk to crop cycles, and farmers are being forced to operate within a shorter time window, be it at the time of sowing in rain-fed areas or at the time of harvest. In this context, mechanisation of farm operations is seen coming to the rescue.

Accelerated pace In the past five to six years, the shortage of labour and increase in wages has accelerated the pace of mechanisation.

“It is an irony that despite high unemployment, there is a shortage in farm labour. And it is becoming acute,” says K Narayana Gowda, Vice-Chancellor, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. He says the drudgery associated with farm operations is not in keeping with the current generation’s expectations and has led to labour staying away.

Adding to this, Government schemes such as the MNREGA, which guarantees jobs for about 100 days a year, have weaned away labourers. The farming community has felt the acute shortage mainly during the crucial sowing and harvesting periods.

In Kendrapara, Odisha, Sanjay Mohanty, a farm owner in his 50s, has difficulty finding labourers. “I enquired on the charges to cultivate land for a moong dal crop. I was told I had to put in ₹4,000 to get 15-20 kg of moong, which does not make sense,” he says.

Consequently, farmers are badly in need of mechanised tools, which help them carry out operations without being at the mercy of labourers. The Government’s strategy of subsidising equipment costs has provided a fillip to farm mechanisation, with more farmers opting for it.

Mechanisation offers savings of seeds and fertilisers while increasing the cropping intensity and boosting overall farm productivity. It also cuts time taken by 20-30 per cent compared with traditional practices.

Kanchan K Singh, Assistant Director General (Engineering) at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), says that though the northern states of Punjab and Haryana were ahead on the mechanisation index, others such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh have caught up with the trend. A substantial portion of tillage, sowing, and harvesting has already been mechanised, mainly for crops such as wheat, rice, soyabean, gram, rapeseed and mustard.

It is also being adopted, albeit gradually, in Odisha, where traditional farming practices are the mainstay. Babaji Charan Das, a 32-year-old farmer from Kalagarh village in Kendrapara district, Odisha, primarily employs manual labourers for paddy cultivation. Sowing and other operations are usually done manually. “We use tractors in peak summers to plough land,” says Das. To plough a 12-gunth (1 gunth = 1,088 sq ft) area in eight hours, labourers charge him ₹500-700. But in summers, when the soil dries up, tractors are hired at ₹500 per hour. They cover 20-25 gunth in an hour’s time.

“Mechanisation is helping raise farm incomes by increasing productivity and limiting post-harvest losses,” says Venkat M Mayande, President of the Pune-based Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers, which has a mandate to promote farm mechanisation.

In the last financial year (2013-14), tractor sales grew 20 per cent to 630,000 units on robust demand from the farm sector. Further, the mechanisation trend is moving beyond tractors, to implements, and is attracting the interest of global companies.

The growth imperative Agriculture, which provides employment to 52 per cent of the population, is estimated to account for 14 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Though the country’s foodgrain production has exceeded 250 million tonnes and India has emerged as major exporter of rice and wheat in recent years, it is set to face challenges in feeding its rapidly growing population in the years ahead.

India may have to produce an additional 90 million tonnes of foodgrain annually by 2030 to cater to growing demand.

With yields per hectare for many crops grown in the country still low amidst static or shrinking land resources, mechanisation is seen as a must to give a fillip to farm productivity. In fact, highly mechanised states, such as Punjab and Haryana, rank high in terms of foodgrain productivity.

Adoption challenges Fragmentation of land and the dwindling size of holdings will be the biggest challenge in mechanisation. The average landholding has dropped to 1.16 hectares from about 1.23 hectare in 2005-06 and the number of land holdings of less than two hectares is on the rise.

To address this, policymakers have tried to promote the concept of custom hiring services, by making various tools and implements available to farmers on a rental basis. The concept is still in its early stages and comes with its own set of challenges, as maintenance and availability of implements to all farmers at the same time has become an issue, whereas farmers with entrepreneurial instincts are already riding the demand boom. The custom-hiring concept seems to be finding support among equipment makers such as Lemken. “We are looking at making our equipment available on lease through our dealers and customers,” says Arvind Kumar, Managing Director and CEO of Lemken India.

The growing proliferation of mechanised farm equipment is altering the rural landscape. Walk into any village or any rural area and chances are that you will come across tractors and other equipment such as mechanical ploughs, reversible ploughs, rotavators or disc harrows and even threshers.

As a result, bullocks, the ubiquitous symbol of the country’s agrarian landscape, have become a fast vanishing breed.

It is estimated that the number of bullocks is reducing at faster than 20 per cent per annum in rainfed areas as a result of frequent droughts, which have resulted in an acute shortage of fodder and higher maintenance costs.

The share of draught animals and farm labourers has come down from over 65 per cent in the past four decades to around 13.67 per cent in 2009-10. In the same period, the tractorisation drive has increased the availability of power from tractors five-fold to around 41 per cent.

“The use of mechanical power for tillage and sowing has increased significantly. Mechanical power now accounts for 86 per cent of the total with average availability of 1.71 kw/ha in 2010-11,” says Gyanendra Singh, a former vice-chancellor of the agricultural university in Madhya Pradesh.

It is estimated that more than 70 per cent of the wheat, gram, soyabean and rice is readied by power threshers and combines.

With 15 different agro-climatic zones across India, the range of equipment needed is pretty vast. For instance, equipment that works in the plains may not be suitable for hilly regions, where terrace farming is practised.

With over two thirds of the farmers willing to quit given an alternate job, retaining and attracting people to agriculture is a challenge for policymakers.

“Mechanisation seems to be the only solution,” says SN Puri, Vice-Chancellor of the Central Agriculture University. “People will remain in farming if the drudgery associated with it is reduced.”

With inputs from Mamuni Das

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