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Farm mechanisation can increase rice production by 40 lakh tonnes by reducing wastage, Benojir Alam, Project Director (Farm Mechanisation) of the Department of Agricultural Extension said on Wednesday.
“Manual harvest leads to 10-15 per cent wastage. But the amount is reduced to 2 per cent if a harvester is used,” he said at a webinar titled “Jute Mechanisation - The Need and Ways Forward”.
USAID funded Feed the Future Bangladesh Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia-Mechanisation Extension Activity (CSISA-MEA), in collaboration with Practical Action Consulting organised the webinar. CSISA-MEA is being implemented by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
Benojir said a combined harvester could work equivalent to 144 agriculture day labourers in eight hours in rice cultivation.
“In the rice harvesting season, we saw labour shortage by 44 per cent which pushed up labour cost to Tk 800 from Tk 300. No one will be interested in crop farming if labour shortage persists,” he said.
He noted that 42 per cent of the population is directly involved in agriculture labour. “We must go for mechanisation as the number of agriculture labourers will decline over the next decade. Otherwise, it will be difficult to do agriculture work in the future,” he added.
CSISA-MEA officials concurred. Practical Action’s representative Faruk Ul Islam noted that the labour structure would be diversified. In the future, jute will be sold after harvesting.
“The entire sector will be mechanised and commercialised, which will create employment and entrepreneurship at different stages. So, it will not create unemployment,” he said.
Currently, 12 types of machines are enlisted to get incentives from the government under the farm mechanisation project. The speakers also urged to include three more machines related to jute cultivation.
There is a need for at least 7,000 jute extraction machines before the next season begins as 7,00,000 hectares are under jute cultivation, CSISA-MEA officials said.
