The planting of rice seedlings has long been done manually. This is a time-consuming and back-breaking process. With the adoption of farm mechanization, this work is about to get much simpler, and much more ecient. Work that took a number of labourers several days to accomplish can now, with the use of a rice transplanter, be done in an hour. It is wonderful indeed to hear the agriculture minister -- who is also a tireless advocate of farm mechanization -- express the hope that no farmer in the country would be planting rice seedlings by hand in five years.
For a long time, fragmented land holdings have stood between farmers and the adoption of farm mechanization. The last barrier is now about to be removed -- some 3,000 acres of land in the country are now being brought under the synchronized cultivation scheme. Under this scheme, farmers essentially plant the same crop at the same time using rice transplanters.
Synchronized cultivation frees up lands for farmers by putting rice seeds in trays. Later when the seeds germinate, they are carried by a rice transplanter, which does the rest of the planting job in a certain farm bloc mechanically. A tremendous amount of muscle-work is taken out of the process using mechanization.
This is a wonderful example of technology making life easier. We hope the government stays on track, and farmers and consumers embrace these new ways of doing farming. Mechanization has transformed all of our sectors -- it has increased productivity, and improved lives. There is no reason for agriculture to be kept out of this progress
