Context: The rising agricultural labour shortages in India is driving demand for farm machinery from harvesters to rotavators. India’s farms are being mechanised, dominated by use of tractors. However, still the demand for farm machinery is far behind that in the global market.
Relevance of the Topic: Mains: Mechanisation of Agriculture: Benefits, Schemes; Challenges.
India’s Agriculture Sector
- Agriculture sector in India contributes to 16% of GVA and accounts for almost 45.8% of India's workforce. There is a high level of disguised unemployment and inefficient utilisation of the Indian workforce. This needs to be countered through skilling of rural youths and promotion of agricultural mechanisation.
- India’s agricultural sector has achieved limited farm mechanisation, particularly dominated by the use of tractors. The market for other farm machinery, like tractor-mounted implements (tillage tools, chemical sprayers, balers, loaders, laser land levellers), self-propelled harvester combines, rice transplanters, is expanding though at a pace much slower than global markets.
Benefits:
- Efficient use of inputs: Mechanization improves the precision in which the agricultural inputs like seeds, pesticides and fertilizers are used in the field. This not only reduces the input cost for the farmer but will also minimize the impact over environment.
- Reduces labour cost: Increased mechanization may reduce the labour costs involved in farming. E.g., Harvesting an acre of wheat utilising 5-7 labourers costs around Rs 5,000 per acre. Using a harvester (combine) to harvest, thresh, clean and deliver an acre of grain to the farmer’s tractor trolley costs Rs 2,000-3,000 per acre.
- Improved land productivity: Helps in conversion of uncultivable land to agricultural land through advanced tilling techniques and in shifting land used for feed and fodder cultivation by draught animals towards food production.
- Social benefits:
- With increasing feminisation of agricultural labour, mechanisation also helps in reducing the burden on women.
- Helps in encouraging the youth to join farming and attract more people to work and live in rural areas.
As per Dalwai Committee, adoption of agricultural mechanisation can help reduce input costs by 25%, enhance productivity by 20% and increase farmers’ income by 25-30%.
Challenges:
- Small landholding size: Mechanising small and non-contiguous groups of farms is against ‘economies of scale’ especially in operations like land preparation and harvesting. As per the latest agricultural census, the average land holding size in India is 1.08 hectares.
- High-procurement costs prevent most of the small/marginal farmers from acquiring capital-intensive farm machinery.
- Cumbersome Credit Procedure to avail agriculture term-loan, creates hindrance to smooth disbursement of loans for mechanisation. The procedure to avail agriculture term loan is more cumbersome than production credit. Availability of suitable officer with required technical appraisal skill is also key issue for the banks, which is also creating hindrance for smooth disbursement of term loan for various activities helping farm mechanization.
- Lack of adequate awareness amongst farmers about technology and Lack of Confidence about increasing productivity due to mechanisation and market-volatility disincentives investment in farm-mechanisation.
- Dependent population: Over dependence of family labour on agriculture due to lack of alternate employment opportunities in rural areas disincentivises many farmers to invest in mechanisation.
Government Initiatives:
- Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization (2014): Assistance to Farmers for procurement of agricultural machineries; Demonstration of Newly Developed Agricultural/ Horticultural Equipment.
- Promotion of Agricultural Mechanisation for in-situ Management of Crop residue: Implemented in Punjab, Haryana, UP, Delhi; Setting of Custom hiring centres; Financial Assistance to farmers for buying agricultural machinery.
- FARMS (Farms Machinery Solutions) Mobile App: Facilitates farmers to hire agricultural machinery and tools.
Way forward:
- Ease of financing: Like KCC, procedures to avail term loan may be simplified with minimum documentation. Capacity building of bank staff dealing with agriculture term loan products may be ensured.
- Shared utility or Uberization: Development of Aggregating apps to aggregate agri-mechanised inputs on rental basis. This enables the small and marginal farmers to mechanise their farms.
- Service facilities: It is important to ensure availability of repair and service facilities in close proximity, so that operation & maintenance issues are addressed.