Ergonomic Evaluation and Economics of  Improved Harvesting Technology for Farm  Women

Dr.Rekha Tiwari; Dr.Dixit A.K.; Dr. Tomar D.S.; Dr.Kaushik S.K.

Volume : II, Issue : VI, June - 2013

Ergonomic Evaluation and Economics of Improved Harvesting Technology for Farm Women

Dr. Rekha Tiwari, Dr. Dixit A. K. , Dr. Tomar D. S. , Dr. Kaushik S. K.

Abstract :

Many agricultural tasks demand high level of strenuous activity. Investment to improve agricultural worker�s (Farmer and farm women) health would be justified on both humanitarian and economic ground. It is also quite true that maximum farm activities were carried out by farm women and these activities not only demands maximum physiological workload as well as energy expenditure also due to the highly drudgery involved in certain farm activities which ultimately leads to health problems and also ill effect on efficiency which reduce output of the activities. It causes considerable physical and mental fatigue and other health problem. The root cause of their suffering is ignorance about improved technologies, age -old method of doing the work. Hence, a study was conducted to assess ergonomically the efficiency of improved technology -Naveen Sickle for harvesting of wheat crop. Forty farm women were selected from adopted cluster area of KVK, Ujjain (M.P.) to assess and compare the impact of improved technology over conventional one. Drudgery Index, RPE, Degree of Difficulty, Muscular skeletal problems, Efficiency and Output etc. were the main parameter of conducted study. Studies have pointed out that farm activities are time and labour intensive, monotonous, repetitive and more drudgery prone are generally performed by women. The result shows that improved method not only reduces drudgery by 28 per cent involved in the activity but also saves energy and time as well as minimizes muscular skeletal problems also. The work output was also found higher 138 m2 area with improved technology as compare to conventional method. In this way results indicates that this method is useful to the farmers as well as to the particular labour also. Additional 286.7 m2 area covered per day and saves Rs. 506 / ha. by the farmer. Farm women completed the work faster and saved nearly 3 hr. /day which can be utilised for another work. In terms of money calculated she could earn additional income Rs. 1450/month due to additional area covered per day.