Indian agriculture after independence

Once India gained independence around 1947, agricultural production was extremely poor. Agricultural production was mostly rain-fed and subsistence-based, using live sources of agricultural power and primitive tools and machinery. More than 80percent of the countryside population has been dependent on farming for an income.

Through its 1928 study, the Royal Committee on Agriculture emphasised the importance of using science to produce and distribute innovative agricultural technology for irrigated, desert, as well as semi-arid regions. However, in comparison to the complexity and variety of the challenges awaiting answers, the amount of effort created within agricultural engineering study and teaching until 1947 was minuscule.

An brief Overview

The Indian agricultural research institute program’s agricultural engineering study manpower had been insufficient, both qualitatively as well as quantitatively, to address the innumerable troubles of evolving machinery and innovations for mechanisation of farming for maximising efficiency of expensive inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, drainage water, crop protection chemical products, and energy outlets to boost higher manufacturing and productivity, reduce drudgery; as well as post-harvest techniques.

Around 1921, Professor Mason Vaugh, senior Research Scientist of the Allahabad Agrarian Institute, Naini, conducted work throughout agricultural engineering relating to farm equipment and machinery. Agricultural engineering study had been initiated around 1930 by the former Agricultural College as well as Research Center in Coimbatore, with Sir Charley, another Britisher, serving as the very first research fellow.

Works have been therefore focussed mostly on developing labor-saving manual plus animal-drawn equipment. Afterward, with the beginning of the Bachelor of science. Agricultural Engineering Plan at Allahabad Farming Institute throughout 1942, the organisation of the Farming Engineering Division at TART around 1947, the Agricultural Engineering Unit at IIT, Kharagpur around 1954, as well as universities of Agricultural Engineering as well as Technology throughout Pantnagar, Ludhiana, Jabalpur, Udaipur, or even Coimbatore. The 1960s provided fuel for agricultural engineering scientific studies.

Aside from these research as well as academic organisations, the formation of the first river valley venture, the Damodar Valley Corporate entity, around 1949, to address the issues of soil as well as water preservation throughout Bihar as well as West Bengal, established up a significant amount of study opportunity throughout soil as well as water technology.

This has been supported by the Ministry of India’s proposal from the Initial Five-Year Program to build soil conservation institutes around the country. Following that, around 1975, all of these institutes were administratively united as a National Soil as well as Water Preservation Research Center in DehraDun underneath the Indian council of agricultural research, with six regional centres.

Recently, groups other than just the Indian council of agricultural research have expressed interest in financing research in several fields of farmland engineering, either financially or even as an intrinsic part of their activities.

 These organisations include the Council of Nonconventional Power Sources, the Agency of Electronics, the Department of Science as well as Technology, this Department of Agriculture as well as Cooperation, the Tata Electricity Research Facility, and also the Indian National Working group of Irrigation as well as Drainage, among others.

The ICAR, on the other hand, has stayed the most essential organisation throughout the nation, supporting studies in all fields of agriculture engineering and technology, mainly via the Branch of Agricultural Engineering, but also in a few ways through the Divisions of Natural Resource Control, Harvest Science, and Gardening.

The development of early farm equipment throughout India was heavily inspired by technological breakthroughs in Britain. Horse-drawn gear brought from England was adapted to fit Indian harness animals, and so mouldboard ploughs, disc harrows, and cultivators have been introduced within India.

 For the very initial time, this Indian council of agricultural research supported a plan during 1954 to perform a state-by-state study of the current equipment and implements utilized by farmers. The Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences presents papers on farming advances across the world.

Suggestions:

• The job of improving, developing, and standardising indigenous implements must be done in a synchronized approach, taking into account the diverse soils, climatic circumstances, and cultural practices that exist in different parts of the nation.
• Unification of elements of authorised agricultural implements must be performed to promote mass production and make them easily and affordably available to prospective farmers.
• Parallel to the ox drawn equipment carrier cum field cart, multipurpose tools or tool chains with appropriate extensions covering a number of applications should be devised.
• Animal yokes as well as hitching procedures should be researched in order to increase their operating efficiency.
• Field assessments of the designed implements must be carried out in a systematic manner and documented on a standardized proforma.

Promising forms of foreign tools must also be tested in other places under diverse soil plus climatic circumstances in order to produce effective designs.

During the 1960s, this ICAR made significant efforts to foster research as well as development of better agricultural implements by building 17 Research Education and Experimentation Centres (RTTCs) in every one of the main states.

 These have been run by state farming ministries. Throughout the later 1960s (Fourth Five-Year Program), two regional Research as well as Experimental Centres had been formed, one based IARI New Delhi and another at TNAU, Coimbatore, as well as four research institutions throughout Ludhiana, Pune, Hyderabad, as well as Mandi. Around the early 1960s, the Allahabad Farming Institute was also established.

They also began another project called Power Tiller Assessment for Indian Settings. These initiatives were successful, and many different types of gear have been created. Over the same time period, another Ford Foundation specialist collaborated with a commercial manufacturer in Hyderabad to produce Swastik Drill, a three-row Animal Driven Seed-cum-Fertilizer.

This would be the beginning point for more significant R&D work involving seed drills plus planters. Around 1960, indigenous tractors manufacturing in India began with very few hundred vehicles per year as well as has since grown to a manufacturing rate of more than 2,00,000 tractors per year, with India emerging as the globe’s number one vehicle producing country.

Conclusion

However, significant breakthroughs have recently occurred to bring up agricultural mechanisation. Because of a lack of diesel fuel and a rise in its cost, mechanical activities will be limited to deep plowing, land smoothing, clearing area, and other works that cannot be performed with ox strength. Bullock-drawn tools and manually controlled implements must now get more attention. For example, for short ranges, bullock carriages have been proven to be cheaper than tractors; hence, enhancing bullock carriages and also ox-drawn, but better equipment is a goal.