Vol. 6, Special Issue 4 (2018)
Development of farm women friendly sickle for reducing drudgery and saving energy
Author(s): Vinay Kumar and Nandana Kumari
Abstract: Bokaro district of Jharkhand has mono cropping type of cropping pattern in which paddy is the main and most important crop. Harvesting of paddy crop is very tedious, monotonous and back breaking activity which is performed solely by farm women through small, traditional and iron made sickle due to which harvesting became the activity of full drudgery and energy intensive. Therefore, an OFT was conducted to develop farm women friendly sickle for reducing drudgery and energy expenditure. The present OFT was of four year experiment. In first year, three treatments were taken i.e. Local sickle as farmer practice, Vaibhav sickle as technological option-1 and Naveen sickle as technological option-II. Total numbers of replications were 10.On the basis of first year findings and given feedback by farm women, a newly designed sickle was developed. In second time, four treatments were taken i.e. Local sickle as farmer practice, Vaibhav sickle as technological option-1, Naveen sickle as technological option-II and Bokaro refined sickle (newly designed) as technological option-III. At first baseline information was collected in which age range of farm women were from 20 to 45 years. Farm women had mean age as 34.5 years, mean body weight as 45.4 kg, mean body height as 150.6 cm and mean value of body mass index as 20 kg/m2. Man-h requirement/ha were 216, 201, 190 and 160 for Local, Vaibhav, Naveen and Bokaro refined sickle respectively. It was also found that number of labour/ha needed was 27 for Local sickle, 25 for Vaibhav sickle, 24 for Naveen sickle and 20 for Bokaro refined sickle. Cost of harvesting/ha was found as Rs. 6411 by Local sickle, Rs 5936 by Vaibhav sickle, Rs. 5698 by Naveen sickle and Rs. 4749 by Bokaro refined sickle. Result had shown that Bokaro refined sickle was helpful to save approximate 26 per cent each in man-h requirement, labour and cost of harvesting per hectare. So it can be concluded that Bokaro refined sickle is most suitable newly designed sickle for farm women of Bokaro district, which is cost effective, efficient in operation and helpful in drudgery reeducation.
Pages: 141-145 | 752 Views 158 Downloads
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How to cite this article:
Vinay Kumar and Nandana Kumari. Development of farm women friendly sickle for reducing drudgery and saving energy. International Journal of Chemical Studies. 2018; 6(4): 141-145.
