The Energy & Resources Institute’s (TERI) Western Regional Center, under one of its projects supported by the Toyota Foundation (Japan), has helped the Chorao Farmers Club acquire a Mechanical Paddy Transplanter. With part funding through TERI’s project and part assistance from the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), the Chorao Farmers Club has purchased their first 8-Row Paddy Transplanter, from Goa Tractor and Tillers.
An Auspiscious Start: Director of Agriculture, Mr. Satish Tendulkar, breaks a coconut to an auspicious start
After experimenting with the transplanter last year, the Chorao Farmers Club decided to acquire this machine, which is also being used by six other farmers groups across the state. The Department of Agriculture is encouraging the transplanter in an attempt to modernise farming practices and provide farmers with an alternative to unreliable, often unavailable or expensive labour.
The Chorao Farmers Club, with assistance from the Department of Agriculture will transplant the Jyoti variety of red kernel rice in the villages of Chodan and Madel (5 ha each village) over the next 7-8 days.
The Farmers Club has resolved to avoid the use of chemical weedicides and pesticides as they believe these may be harmful in the long term and have been assisted by the Agriculture Department in identifying alternative methods of crop protection.
Says Gita Uskaikar from Chodan, who has recently been trained to raise the nursery as needed for the machine, “It is easy to raise this special nursery, but farmers must do it themselves on-site since it makes the process of transplantation easier. Now that our Club has its own machine, we will be able to systematically transplant paddy seedlings across the village”. The time saved while transplanting by using the machine is significant. The Club transplanted 1.5 ha (6000m2) in 5 hours, which would have otherwise taken four women, working together five days to complete.
Yogita Mehra from TERI adds, “There is much excitement among our farmers as they are keen to see the results and use the machine to revive the practice of winter paddy cropping in the village”.
Over the next year, the Chorao Farmers Club is also looking to acquire additional farm machinery that can help improve productivity and efficiency of their farming practices. This aspiration of the Club is going to continue to be supported financially by TERI and the Toyota Foundation, in addition to the support that will be provided for building entrepreneurial skills, providing training for new technologies and crops and innovative experiments in marketing and brand building.
In a joint program with the Department of Agriculture, the Chorao Farmers Club has transplanted over 7 Ha of paddy in Chodan and Madel villages using our newly acquired mechanical paddy transplanter.
This is the first large scale initiative using mechanical transplanting methods — and is being undertaken as a solution to labour unavailability and costs in several villages across Goa.
Mechanical paddy transplanter being used in Chodan village
In this project — managed by our own project managers Namita Khandeparkar (Madel) and Gita Uskaikar (Chodan) — the nursery was prepared centrally (by Gita Uskaikar and the Department of Agriculture) and then used in the transplanting activity for the fields of 28 participating farmers.
Our farmers felt that this was more convenient and affordable than their current model because of the unreliability of agricultural labour. These experiments shall continue in subsequent seasons so we can evaluate the impact and benefits of these methods over the long term.
The Chorao Farmers Club, will be testing the feasibility of mechanised paddy productionin order to evaluate the usefulness and cost effectiveness of an 8-row paddy transplanter on a test plot in Chorao island.
With support from The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and NABARD and under the guidance of the Department of Agriculture and the Krishi Vigyan Kendra, the Chorao Farmers Club will be transplanting paddy seedling using a transplanter on Monday 20th July.
The members of the Chorao Farmers Club, who have a high dependence on rice cultivation, have been dogged by labour availability problems in recent years. The shortage in labour availability coupled with increasingly high labour costs have been contributing to the retardation of agriculture in the state. The use of the paddy transplanter is expected to significantly reduce the labour cost required (by upto 50%) during the transplanting of paddy seedlings from the nursery into the fields – which is one of the largest components of overall labour costs in the cultivation of paddy. The chart below shows this activity makes up about 31% of the total operative costs of paddy production when labour is hired. This also cuts down the time required for the transplanting process by over 90%.
Source: Chorao Farmers Club experiment for the paddy season in 2008
In order to use this transplanter the main change required by a farmer is in the plantation of the nursery. Thick mats of seedlings need to be developed in what is known as a ‘Dapog Nursery’. These can be compared with the ‘tiles’ of fine grass available for planting lawns. Specific sized seedling-tiles are fed into the transplanter, which can plant 8 rows in one go, and there is a predetermined distance at which clumps of 5-7 seedlings will be pulled out from the ‘tile’ and transplanted. Typically, this transplanter can cover 1 acre (approximately 4,000 sq.mts) in two hours.
Agriculture in Goa has taken a backseat in terms of a way of life as well as a means of livelihood. High levels of urbanization, education and family incomes and a rapidly developing real estate market, coupled with high labour costs are some of the factors that seem to propel farmers away from their land towards white-collar jobs in cities. Despite various government schemes, assistance from relevant departments and engagement of banks it has been difficult to revive interest in agriculture in the state.
In order to address the problem of high labour costs and increasing difficulty in getting labour, the Club has decided to undertake an experiment with mechanisation, supported by NABARD, KVK, Dpt. of Agriculture and TERI. At the end of this experiment we want to be able to decide whether mechanisation is the way forward or not.
The aim of this experiment is to compare costs and yields from four different planting methods i.e.
- Broadcasting of seeds (scattering seeds in the field)
- Manual transplanting of 18-21day old seedling from a nursery
- Drum seeder
- 8-Row mechanical transplanter
The variety of rice used for this purpose is Revati.
We plan to take a plot of land and divide it into 4 equal parts, one for each method. Plant the paddy as per each of the 4 methods above and track costs associated with it (labour, time, machinery hired etc…) and eventually compare yields.
For techniques 1 & 3 raising a nursery is not required, though paddy seeds need to be pre-soaked for a minimum of 24-36 hours.
For techniques 2 & 4 raising a nursery is imperative. For manual transplantation a regular nursery is planted. For the mechanical transplanter, a Dapog nursery (portable nursery – a Philippine method introduced in India) is planted.
At present, the site has been selected for the experiment. The nurseries have been planted. Transplantation has been planned in the next 17-18 days.
Updates with photos will shortly follow.
