Pointing at increasing the demand for foodgrain owing to the country’s growing population and fast diminishing labour force in the agricultural sector, Dr. P.M. Salimath, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur (UAS-R), said that using machinery and equipment with advanced technologies was crucial for ensuring food security.
He was addressing the first Technology and Machinery Demonstration Mela on the university campus here on Friday. “At present we are producing over 240 million metric tonnes of food grains a year with an average 6.3 per cent annual growth, thanks to green and white revolutions. The demand is expected to increase to 300 million metric tonnes by 2025, considering the growing population. We can meet the demand only through extensive use of machineries and advanced technologies that promise higher productivity on limited land resources,” he said.
The fast diminishing labour force in the agriculture sector, he added, has forced the farming community to resort to mechanisation that ensures less labour, more productivity and timely intervention. “At present, the farmers are losing around 20 per cent of crop due to issues related to labour scarcity such as failure to execute the tasks in a timely manner. The machines on the other hand would not only reduce the percentage of loss to less than 5 per cent, but it would also increase productivity by around 20 per cent,” he said.
He called upon the agricultural machine makers to come up with new machines that could increase the productivity. Kiran Kumar, Joint Director, Department of Agriculture, hailed the government initiatives in empowering farmers through offering subsidies for machinery purchase and providing machines on rent.
“Apart from offering subsidies for purchasing farm machineries, the government has taken initiative to open a large number of custom-hiring centres in rural areas for renting out machinery. It would greatly help small and middle farmers who are unable to invest on the machines,” he said. New farm machinery developed by College of Agricultural Engineering, which is the part of UAS, and by private machinery makers were put on display at over 25 stalls.
