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Top1. Introduction
In the world, the most extensive developed crop is paddy with an active involvement of about 113 countries in cultivating paddy. In producing rice, the rank of India is second after China. Harvesting of paddy in Indian agriculture has been one of the most labor consuming operations. From the field’s the matured rice crops are collected in harvesting process, which includes cutting, preparing of stacks, and other handling activities. The harvesting of paddy is normally done either by the farmers with the use of manually sickles & knives, or by mechanical means with the use of reapers or combined-harvesters. Using sickles for harvesting has been reported to be a slower as well as labor-consuming process (Sahay, 1971). The harvesting of paddy is required to be done at appropriate climatic-conditions as well as moisture-content in order to avoid the possible shattering-losses. Which would otherwise, may result in losses owing to deferred harvesting-operations that cause economical-losses to the farming-community in addition to the entire-nation. Harvesting by mechanical methods is usually preferred for avoiding the losses because of deficient labor-force requirements as required for manually harvesting. These days, the farmers are under the preferences of a wide range of technologies with complex choices that are either accessible to them or under-improvement stage. The agricultural sectors need to utilize a wide-scope of emerging-innovations and farm-practices to their farm-related activities with the view of fulfilling the changing-demands of consumers with the public for nourishment and the ventures furnished by agriculture. The primary objective of this study was the evaluation in the drudgery-reduction as well as the adoption-levels by the use of mechanical power-tiller reapers in harvesting of paddy as compared to manual harvesting by the use of serrated sickles in the agricultural-sectors of Odisha in India.
In spite of a number of studies on the evaluation of the agricultural tools, very few and limited study has been made on drudgery levels of farmers in agriculture. For instance, for overall physiological-work demand, the heart-rate has been regarded as a better-index in context to energy-expenditure that enables in easier measurement (Pheasant, 1991). At CIAE (Bhopal, India), the evaluation of three sickles were made such as ‘Naveen, Vaibhav, and local-sickles’ by considering twelve farm women while harvesting of paddy. The mean heart rates and the outputs were reported as 103beats/min & 47.3m2/hr, 107beats/min & 60.7m2/hr, and 106beats/min & 65.4m2/hr, while operating ‘Naveen, Vaibhav, and local sickles’ (Singh, 2012). In a study of women workers in Coimbatore (India), the average heart-rate was found as 120beats/min while harvesting paddy with local sickles (Karunanithi and Tajuddin, 2003). Similarly, different researchers have used heart-rates with the purpose of assessing the physiological workloads (Balasankri et al., 2003; Singh et al., 2006; Singh and Gite, 2007; Singh, 2009; McNeill and Westby, 1999; Mishra et al., 2018; Yadav et al., 2007). In comparison to manual harvesting by sickles, the performance evaluation of power reaper for was done for rice harvesting. The actual field-capacity and labor-requirements were reported to be 0.24 ha/h & 4 man-h/ha for the reaper, while 0.05 ha/h & 28 man-h/ha for harvesting manually. Moreover, as compared to power reaper, the cutting cost for harvesting manually was found to be 67% more (Aung et al., 2014). Most of the Indian farmers were reported of using conventional sickles instead of mechanized methods for paddy harvesting. The actual field-capacity by the use of three different harvesting methods were reported as 0.0045 ha/man-hr by sickles, 0.1051 ha/man-hr by self-propelled reaper, and 0.2208 ha/man-hr by using mini-tractor mounted reaper, respectively. Further, the cost-savings were revealed to be 43.84% by self-propelled reaper, and 63.30% by mini-tractor mounted reaper in comparison to sickles (Vora et al., 2015). It has been reported in a study that insufficiency of labor during the season of harvesting, and incompatible weather-conditions were the major causes of greatest losses to the farmers. Further, in order to ensure timely harvesting operations, it was recommended to adopt mechanical methods in agriculture (Prem et al., 2017).