Operationalization of Custom Hiring Centres on Farm Implements in Hundred Villages in India

Abstract

Timeliness of agricultural operations is crucial to coping with climatic variability, especially with sowing and intercultural operations. With increasing climatic variability, timely sowing or re-sowing alone can reduce crop losses significantly. However, farmers are often not able to complete critical operations in time for want of labour availability. This calls for promotion of appropriate agricultural machinery for performing critical agricultural operations. Although many efforts have gone in this direction in the past, not much dent has been made in improving the timeliness of agricultural operations. This is mostly because of the un-affordability of many machines by small farmers and difficulties in maintenance and repairs. CRIDA has been working for promotion of mechanization in small farms for over two decades and has developed several institutional systems to address this issue. One of the most successful strategies is the custom hiring of agricultural implements. This has successfully empowered farmers to tide over the shortage of labour and improve efficiency of agricultural operations. CRIDA has attempted this concept on large scale through 100 Krishi Vigyan Kendras across the nation under the National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA). This is an effort, first of its kind that has caught the attention of farmers, state extension functionaries and planners for addressing the growing labour crisis in agriculture and the need for improving timeliness of operations, particularly in the backdrop of climate change. In this publication, we share the basic information that illustrates the range of machinery deployed across 100 villages and the performance of custom hiring centers in these places. Although, this publication does not detail the impact of custom hiring centers at this stage, it tries to give a glimpse of the prospects in mechanizing small farms in areas faced with climate related challenges. Besides, we also hope that this will pave the way for appropriate policy formulation for promoting small farm mechanization at state and district levels.