4-Access to CASI Machineries

Transcript

Hello friends. Whenever we talk about the adoption of conservation agriculture then the availability of machinery and tools on time is very important. This is even more important and true for smallholder farmers. To understand it better, we look at it from a value chain point of view. The most important link in the value chain is the farmer. A farmer needs access to machinery at the required time and he should know how much he has to pay for it. He seeks quality work like if the operator of the machine is not trained then there could be calibration problems in the machine due to which the crop might suffer.

Now, if we talk about eastern gangetic plains, then most of the big farmers here are also service providers. For them, the biggest concern is timely payment of the services they provide. They tell us that farmers get us to work on their farm but then they do not pay us on time. Also conservation agriculture is still not practiced in a large area so the volume of business is small. Another problem that is common is that farms in eastern gangetic plains are mostly fragmented so moving machinery and tractors from one plot to another consumes a lot of fuel which makes it less profitable.

Sometimes, if sowing has already been done in farms that are close to the road, then it becomes difficult to do sowing in plots that are in the inner parts. At times, the service providers also tell us that they require training on how to operate a newly launched machine.

The third stakeholder in the value chain is the government. In Bihar there is a 50% subsidy on machinery that is related to conservation agriculture. But sometimes this process is very complex and people find it difficult to make use of it. The government is trying to make this process easier and now we also have the option of direct benefit transfer. Government is also into capacity development and this is done mainly through research and development organizations. These organizations not just help in capacity development but also develop prototypes and protocols.

Manufacturers also have an important role to play and their main complaint is that the demand for such machines is less. They say this is not a very big business as it is seasonal in nature and many times it becomes difficult to procure good quality parts and materials for these machines.

Now the most important missing component in the entire value chain is the maintenance workshops. There is still a lack of locally available maintenance workshops because the business for such machines is very less as it is seasonal and also these machines maintenance requires trained people who can fix it. The spare parts of these machines are not easily available in Bihar as most of these machines come from Punjab. So they have to order the spare parts from Punjab.

So we have to understand the entire value chain very well and identify and remove all the shortcomings. Only then we can increase the availability of machines and increase the spread of conservation agriculture.

Now we will discuss the solution to these problems. First, if we want to increase the availability of machines then we have to expand the scaling of conservation agriculture. Once the area under conservation agriculture increases then people will start buying machines and its big business will grow.

Secondly, we can open community based custom hiring centers for smallholder farmers who are not able to buy these machines. In Bengal such initiatives have proved to be very helpful to the farmers. We will discuss a related case study in the last week of this course.

Some startups also provide conservation agriculture related machines through custom hiring or through service providers. In Bihar we have such a startup called DeHaat with which my friend Shashank is also involved. So startups can also enter and do business in this area.

To strengthen this entire process, we have to do capacity development at every level and we need trained and skilled human resource for it.

By doing all this, we can improve the access of small and marginal farmers to such machines and expand the adoption of conservation agriculture.

Thank you.