Technology adoption to reduce the harvesting losses and wastes in agriculture

Abstract

In general, the harvesting of paddy is carried out through manual or mechanical approach of cutting the crop, and then collecting and bundling them. During harvesting stage, different kinds of losses are incurred owing to a number of factors like shattering, shedding of grains, improper methods and time of harvesting, and so on. However, in the absence of appropriate grain harvesting machines, the small-scale farmers today are still with no other option than the use of hand-tools. This study aimed at: (1) Identifying the losses associated with traditional harvesting of paddy; (2) identifying the factors responsible for harvesting losses; (3) design and evaluation of modified reaper in terms of harvesting losses; (4) identifying the factors affecting technology adoption in Indian agriculture. Initially, an effort was made to design an affordable grain reaper in order to help the small-scale farmers to harvest their grain more efficiently. Then, two treatments of paddy harvesting were finalized such as manually harvesting by the use of sickles, and harvesting by the use of modified reaper, for the evaluation field-efficiency; cutting-efficiency; and harvesting losses, respectively. The factors responsible for harvesting losses encountered in rice cultivation along with the factors affecting technology adoption (TA) were identified. Then, with consultation with experts, the relationships among factors of TA were clarified by the use of “Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM)” approach. Subsequently, a “Matrix Impact Cross-Reference Multiplication Analysis (MICMAC)” was done for the identification and clustering of the TA factors. The losses that reduced by the use of modified reaper over manual harvesting with sickles were found to be 6.49% for cutting-efficiency, and 6.49% for harvesting losses. The major factor responsible for harvesting losses encountered in rice cultivation was reported to be “Inappropriate harvesting tools and equipment” by 42 farmers (29.17%) out of a total of 144 farmers, which was found to have a positive as well as significant correlation at p ≤ 0.05 level (2-tailed) with the factor of “Improper harvesting methods”. Thus, by considering the predominance of small-scale farmers with their limited farm sizes, adequate and appropriate “Research and Development” should be carried out with the aim of designing and developing of economical as well as efficient agricultural implements and machineries.