Farms vote for machines

Soaring labour costs arising from the dearth of farm workers for harvest operations in the midst of huge disguised unemployment in rural India highlight the stark paradox in the agrarian economy. Farm labour availability has worsened in recent years for many reasons, including the success of welfare schemes such as NREGA and migration of the rural youth to urban areas in search of non-farm job opportunities. No wonder, then, that large growers and crop-user industries are calling in machines to replace partially at least, men and women for some farm-related operations.

Agro-processing industries in the sugar and oilseeds sectors are encouraging growers to increasingly adopt mechanised harvesting, which is efficient, economical and user-friendly. For instance, some sugar mills in Tamil Nadu have been helping cane growers with mechanised harvesting because labour costs have turned unaffordable. Up North, such a practice is already common. Groups of farmers in Junagadh district of Gujarat's Saurashtra region (the country's peanut bowl) regularly hire combines (harvesting machines) to harvest groundnut in-shell during the kharif season and complete the process efficiently, not only to market the produce in time but also to save the harvested crop from weather aberrations. Although the density of machines used (tractors, combines and so on) is limited now, mechanisation of farming, in general (use of tractors, for instance), and harvesting, in particular, is likely to be adopted more widely in the future as labour becomes scarce and costly. Without doubt, efficient mechanisation practices will contribute to improved farm productivity and farm incomes, as also safety.

Despite its recognised commercial advantages, an important constraint to farm mechanisation here is the highly fragmented nature of landholdings (80 per cent of farmers are smallholders with just about one hectare of land), diverse soil types and limited financial capacity of small farmers to own and operate machines. The way forward could be to motivate small farmers in clusters of villages to combine or form consortia to hire the services of farm machine suppliers. In addition to strengthening the extension services for post-harvest activities, agro-processing units in the private sector can help small growers mechanise in groups. Any perception of threat to existing farm labour in the short run may be misplaced simply because the process of farm mechanisation in the country is likely to be gradual. It is important for the policymakers to realise that mechanisation per se is unlikely to transform agriculture, but when combined with growth-oriented policies that seek to enhance production and productivity, it would benefit agriculture in general.

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