Trends in farm mechanization by sugarcane small land holders in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The mechanization of farm power is becoming extremely important day by day for the survival, efficiency and competitiveness of all field and plantation crops of the country. Sugarcane crop grown in the dry zone is no exception. In fact in these areas the available manpower is low due to low population densities and harsh climatic conditions and remoteness of locations from major cities. Thus scarcity of labour is common in sugarcane areas for manual work. Furthermore, labourer manual work get easily tired while working in the dry zone compared to the hills due to higher temperatures, harder soils, insolation and dry desiccating winds. Thus output of these workers is low compared to workers in the hills. In addition, cane fields tend to have a high population of poisonous snakes, which also make worker to be careful and slow in the cane fields. Thus timely agricultural operations get neglected causing crop losses while labour wages keep rising day by day especially during planting, weeding and harvesting/loading periods of sugarcane growing. Analysis of the cost components of sugarcane cultivation shows that harvesting of loading of cane comprise 35% of the costs followed by land preparation(21%), planting(16%), weeding(10%), fertilizer application(10%) and irrigation(8%).It is evident that harvesting and loading of cane is the highest cost component in sugarcane cultivation, while weeding fertilizer application, stubble shaving, earthing up, off baring in the ratoons are neglected by small land holder farmers as manual methods are labour intensive leading to considerable losses in crop production. Thus, small holder sugarcane farm mechanization to improve the productivity and ease strain on human labour has become crucial in order to improve sugarcane productivity in Sri Lanka.

Some of the smallholder farm tools and implements developed by the Sugarcane Research Institute which can be powered by a two-wheeled tractor such as the SRI tyne cultivator, Fertilizer applicator, Disc ratooner, Furrow opener, and the new design sugarcane harvesting knife as well as the implements for animal drought technology are described in this review.