A sustainability-oriented design approach for agricultural machinery and its associated service ecosystem development

Abstract

Agricultural machinery (AM) is an important input in the agricultural process. It, thus, has an impact on achieving sustainable agriculture. This paper tackles the question of developing a process for the design of sustainable AM and its associated service ecosystem in the context of small farms of developing countries. The design and development efforts of agricultural mechanization in these contexts are preoccupied with concerns for the cost of the AM, increasing cropping intensity and reducing input costs like labor, seeds, and fertilizers. They push towards the timely accomplishment of tasks, reduction in post-harvest losses, and enhancement of crop output, resulting in increased farm income. However, how these are accomplished more often results in several detrimental effects on the farmland and the overall environment. Also, in the long run, if these approaches are not designed, manufactured, marketed, operated, serviced, and disposed of with due diligence on the sustainability of the overall agroecosystem, disruptions in the socio-economic fabric of the local agriculture-based economy can occur.This paper examines if the current sustainability-orienting design (SoD) approaches, in the form of guidelines or approaches, address sustainability holistically (on the social, economic, and environmental dimensions) during the design process. At the design phase, we consider the entire life cycle of these AM and its associated ecosystem. The life cycle here includes the following stages: design, development, manufacturing, sale, use, repair, maintenance, and end-of-life. In the paper, we first present a review of existing SoD approaches and guidelines from the domain of agriculture and design for sustainability. From the domain of agriculture, we found lifecycle assessment-based methods with a strong focus on the environmental dimension. We also identified some researchers suggesting the need for a holistic approach and attempting analysis and design of agricultural machinery using integrated approaches like the product-service systems (PSS) approach. From the domain of design for sustainability, we identified that SoD approaches from sustainable PSS design and life cycle assessment domains are apt for the given context. Then, we picked up one methodology from sustainable PSS design domain called Methodology for System Design for Sustainability (MSDS). We also picked up a life cycle assessment based design toolkit called ICS toolkit. We checked their applicability for designing sustainable AM and its associated service ecosystem and identified the pros, cons, and gaps in them. The case study - design of a two-wheeled power tiller-based bed planter and its associated service ecosystem for small farms of Bangladesh were used for the same. Drawing insights, we conclude the need for an appropriate SoD approach that combines three perspectives: sustainable PSS design, sustainable agriculture and environmentally sustainable product design. We next propose a possible SoD methodology for the same. The novelty of this research lies in bringing together the knowledge and expertise from two domains, agriculture, and product design. We use this combination to devise an SoD methodology that addresses sustainability holistically for the design of sustainable AM and its associated service ecosystem.