Neeraj Singh
The art of transforming a desired seed into a plant with the help of different natural and artificial resourcesto meet the food requirements or to make a livelihood is seen as farming. Jammu division is blessed with different types of zones whether it be subtropical (Jammu and Samba), intermediate (parts of Reasi and Ramban) or temperate (Kishtwar and Poonch). Prosperous agriculture has mainly three requirements i.e. a fertile soil, enough sunlight and abundant supply of water. The agriculture in Jammu division is supported by all three in the form of alluvial soil to mountainous soil, a hot summer and a humid monsoon. The water requirement of the division is supplied and met by the different canals, perennial water sources, glacier water in temperate zones and monsoon rains which can be harvested to fulfill the needs of dry lands of the division. But instead of all these blessings, the agriculture sector in the division is not able to work at its full potential because of the dependency on human labour and farm animals as a power source in the farms. Some of the plain areas such as Jammu, Kathua, Samba and parts of Udhampur have seen some increase in the use of tractors and threshers but sadly that has been the extent of mechanization in agriculture in the division so far. Only a few of the agricultural operations in the fields have been mechanized with the increasing trend of using cultivators, rotavators, land plane, knapsack sprayers, threshers, etc. The status of mechanization in hilly areas is even scantier with a slight absorption of power tiller there has not been much increase or absorption in agriculture mechanization. In order to improve these numbers we need to improve the common misconceptions and make the farmers aware of the benefits of mechanization. The benefits of mechanization are ample as the machines require less time to perform an operation which means that the loss the farmer has to bear due to the late harvesting or sowing or weeding can be minimized. Another benefit of the machines is they require less labour and makes the operations less rigorous. This idea of making the operations labour free is quite difficult for the farmers to understand as one of the most common belief that farmers have is why they need machines when they can hire labours who are available at much lesser initial cost. But with an energy equivalent of 0.1 horsepower, human labour although renewable is an inefficient sources of power and same is the case with animal power at an energy equivalent of 0.75 to 1.0 horsepower is considered inefficient because of low field capacity (area covered per unit time). Another interesting fact is that 25 man years can be replaced by a 35hp tractor showing the vast difference between the two power sources. The recent trend of labour migration due to the pandemic has resulted in delay of farming operations and loss of yield as it has also been reported that due to the lack of availability of labours, the delay in harvesting of crops results in 10- 12% yield loss. The scarcity of labours due to rapid urbanization as reported by World Bank estimates will leave only 25.70% agriculture workers to total workers in 2050 from 59.10 % in 1991. Another problem for mechanization is its high initial cost which most of the farmers cannot afford. But the farmers must put emphasis on hiring machines instead of buying if that suits their economic balance and those farmers who own such machineries can also benefit from lending their machines. Moreover, the Government provided subsidies on agricultural machines to help farmers mechanizing their fields. Another misconceptions of mostly hilly farmers is that machinery in agriculture only means tractor which they find impossible to use or operate in hilly areas because of terrace farming and no network of farm roads. This problem can be rectified by using small machines made especially for hilly or small areas. The average land holding in the erstwhile state being 0.67 ha makes these kind of small machines suitable for most of the Jammu division farmers. These machines are generally self-propelled or motor powered portable machines designed to carry out different farm operations from seed bed preparations to threshing. Such type of machines are generally imported from Japan and are made available in the market and are also being developed by the Agricultural Universities. Some of these machineries are power tiller, self-propelled planters, power weeders, self-propelled harvesters, motorized threshers, etc. The shifting of power from human-animal to machine has proved beneficial in other states and is one of the key supporters of Green revolution. In order to feed the growing population from limited area, farmers will have to find ways to increase the productivity of the land as with the increase in population, the rate of construction and urbanization is also increasing which is resulting in a decrease in the agricultural area and agricultural work force. Therefore, this shifting of power is more like a necessity to sustain and prosper agriculture in these modern times.
(The author is Ph.D Research Scholar farm machinary and Power Engineering SKUAST)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
