Saturday, September 13, 2014

Unsolved agricultural engineering problems: Can today’s technologies solve them?

Agriculture being backbone of India today is still suffering from man power. Less farmers day by day and more demand for agricultural products.  Less people going for this occupation because farming is difficult and there are non-predictive yields. However there are examples where in people doing non agriculture job have shifted to agriculture but they are very few.   The very major reason is that agriculture in India has many problems unresolved. Agriculture requires lot of workers, so not much things are automated. I've tried to list down those. These problems might have been solved in other countries or specific reasons in India also but are not very popular in all India rural areas.

1. No proper machinery to harvest the maize. Though there exist the mechanized systems for harvesting the maize, they do not serve the exact purpose. For example, the maize harvesting machine (called Combine), crushes the entire maize plant which is unwanted. That means that it does reaping, threshing & winnowing at once. However, no effective husking machinery being used in India. Husking is very time consuming and requires huge hand power. Though there are husking machines talked about in the world, they not effectively used by India farmers. Due to this reason, farmers have decreased growing maize because harvesting it involves lot of manual work and requires huge man effort. The bottom line is that we need effective machinery for husking the maize.



Maize is one example crop whose cultivation problem is talked about, this is true for other crops as well such as rice, wheat etc.



2. Irrigation Management: No solution/system for managing the water pumping motor.   

Hence we do not have easy way to do the following.
Whenever there is power supply, the system has to notify user through message or call. When the system is configured to auto start the motor on power supply, the system has to do the same and inform user on the action.
The system has to auto stop the motor when the motor is not pumping the water and send alert on the same. When the motor is not pumping the water, it consumes less electricity which is below the minimum required to pump the water. The system should also receive start/stop commands through phone and execute the same.

3. What are the best yielding crops? There is no system for deciding which

crops to grow. Sometimes the farmers will be a dilemma as to which crops to plant. There has to be a system that measures the soil quality and suggests what can be cultivated. The system also takes other parameters into account before deciding such as the weather prediction for the year, season, amount of water availability etc. 


4. Lack of Best Market:  Sometimes farmers won’t get the right price for their agricultural (farm) products. There is no system for finding the brokers/agents who give the best price for their hard work.


5. Lack of Connectivity & collaboration: Though government has taken some steps such as agriculture toll free number for farmers to get information related to agricultural activities, it is not enough. The farmers need more  connectivity with other farmers, government agencies, agricultural universities and collaboration system to get maximum advantage. 


The above few problems might have given you some thoughts as to kind of the problems that the farmers face today. Again, these solutions may be already present in other agriculturally advanced countries and in some states in India itself. However, these solutions are not reaching all farmers. So the question remains, can today's technologies solve agricultural problems in India and reach out to all Indian farmers?

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