4-Laser Land Leveler

Transcript

Namaste friends

Today, we are going to learn about laser land leveler. It is an automated laser guided beam operated machine that laser levels the outfield in a highly precise manner. It has three components which you can see on the graph. The first one is a transmitter which emits rays. The second one is laser eyes which receive these rays and from where it goes to the control boxwhich in turn sends the signals to the hydraulic system in order for the scrapper to work. We will look into these things in greater detail when we demonstrate it on the field.

Namaste friends, today we are going to explain to you about a very important machine which plays an important role in agriculture as it saves water, increases input use efficiency and overall productivity and quality of crops. This is called laser land leveler and the local name for this is “Computer Manjha”. We will look into things like from where did this machine come, what does it do on the field, what is its contribution in agriculture and how does this work. Before going to these things, we would like to go in the past of this machine and learn about its history.

When we are on the field then even if our field is well levelled, it appears as if it is levelled despite having 10 cm to 15 cm of difference of elevation. Now if you give water to an unlevelled field having a difference of elevation between 10 cm to 15 cm, then we would have to water at least 15 cm before the patches which are at height of 15 cm begins to get water. This causes the crops to die because of water logging in patches where the land is low and also the nutrients wash away to the lower level patches from high elevation patches. So this causes a lot of variations in crop production from the same field. In some patches we get very good crops and in some other patches the crop production is very low. Even when we do land levelling with the local traditional land leveler, we cannot minimize the difference in elevation to less than 10 cm depending on the size of the field.

This technology was first introduced in 2001 with the help of a rice-wheat consortium. This machine was already present in India and came in 1990 but it was only limited within the confines of a research institute and was being used for research purposes. The first unit that came to India in 2001 came from Pakistan with the help of CIMMYT, IRRI and ICAR. This machine was used for the first time in district Hapur of western Uttar Pradesh on the field of farmer Dr Tyagi.

When this technology was new, it faced a lot of criticism as it was sophisticated and completely computer based technology, so there were doubts about how the farmer would operate it.

Now from 2001 to 2005, this machine did not spread and its numbers increased from one unit to 15 to 20 units. From 2005 to 2010, 1000 units were sold and then from 2010 onwards there was a revolution in its adoption and now at least 50,000 units are now operating at different farmers’ fields. There was no government incentive or subsidies between the year 2001 to 2010 on the  laser land leveler machine. This was an innovation for the farmer and they had seen the benefits from this machine like water saving, crop yield and quality increase and inputs efficiency. The most important advantage of using this machine was that the time it took to irrigate the field with a diesel pump had reduced from 10 hours to around 5 hours. So the farmers saw a lot of benefits and cost savings. This was a brief history of laser land leveler.

Now, we will look at what is a laser land leveler. This machine makes its own beam or level and then we move it in circles using a tractor. With a scrub, it scrapes or cuts land from places where it is high and dumps it in places where it is low. This machine works automatically and the operator has to do nothing. It completely levels the field and the maximum variability is 2 cm.

In the beginning, it was imported from the United States and its price was around 4.5 to 5 lacs excluding the tractor. Soon as it became more popular, many manufacturers started producing it like Dashmesh, Trimble, LICA, Land force and now its cost around 2 lakhs to 4 lakh depending on the quality and scraber bucket width and transmitter radiation.

We would now look at its components. It has three very important components. The first one is a transmitter. Transmitter is fixed at any corner of the field and it has a radius of 200 metres to 1600 metres. It is connected to a battery and transmits infrared rays that go up to a radius of 1600metres depending upon the capacity of the transmitter.

Another important component of a laser land leveler is the laser eye receiver. So the transmitter emits the rays and the receiver receives them. These both components make a level or beam between them and get connected.

The third component is a controller. The receiver collects the signals and then sends them to the controller. Controller has two modes, an auto mode and a manual mode. Now, it is in auto mode and it can work automatically on its own. We can also switch to the manual mode if it is cutting more than we want. The controller sends signal to a fourth important component called Hydraulic pump. The Hydraulic pump is connected to the hydraulic system of the tractor. The hydraulic system of the tractor has two pipes one is the outlet and the other is the inlet. From here it gives oil to the hydraulic pump and this controls the scrubber bucket and then the oil goes back. The Hydraulic pump does the job of circulation.

The most important component is the scrubber bucket. This entire thing is called scrubber bucket. As we get the signal from the controller to the hydraulic pump, the pump controls the bucket which in turn collects the soil from high ground and dumps it in lower ground as the tractor is moving in circular direction. There are two tyres behind the hydraulic system. This machine comes in two forms one with a single tyre and the other with two tyres. The single tyre variant vibrates a lot so the perfection required for levelling was not achieved and so these days we have a two tyre variant.

This is the Hydraulic pump and as it comes to the gauze, it controls where it is required to go high, it goes high and if low then it goes low. The bucket can become large or small depending on the horsepower of the tractor. If the horsepower of the tractor is low, then we can take a small bucket and if it is large then we can take a large bucket that would move more soil.

Now, you can see Yashraj standing over there with a survey unit in his hand. It surveys the elevation of the field. Yashraj will explain how this works. If you raise it, it will tell us the level and we will note these and it is done in a zig zag way.

In the entire field, we measure the leveler points in 15 to 20 different spots and take an average to know the average leveling of the field. Then we take the tractor and scraper on the field at the required level and fix the receiver and transmitter beam and set it up on auto mode. Then we have to operate the tractor in a circular form. We should not operate the tractor from corner to corner as this will accumulate a lot of soil and because of which the tractor won’t run. During the working demo, you will see that when a lot of soil is accumulated then the tractor cannot move forward. So, we should operate the tractor slowly.

We can fix the level at either macro level or micro level. Once we are done with the macro level then we can move to the micro level which is mainly for fine tuning.

Now let’s see how we operate this. The transmitter over there is powered by a battery of 6 volts to 12 volts.

Now, this is powered by the tractor battery and is connected to it through a wire. The controller and the hydraulic pump are also powered by the tractor battery. So all these three parts are powered by the tractor battery. The transmitter can also be run through small cell batteries but they are exhausted very soon.

Now, how will this work in the controller.When it is in auto how we can control it and in the manual mode, Suman will explain how to control it. On doing it up, the hydraulic goes up and to bring it down then we move it down. But once we fix the beam and set it up on auto then we don’t have to control it up and down with our hands. But when we first use it on macro level, we do that in auto mode and then we run it on micro level.

The field efficiency of this machine depends on the size of the field and the elevation. The ideal field size for this machine is 2000 square metres to 4000 square metres which comes around 1 acre. So this can level a 1-acre field in 2 to 3 hours depending on the elevation of the field. If the elevation is a lot, then it would take a lot of time but if it is normal elevation then it can do that in 2 to 3 hours. Farmers can hire the services of this machine and the charges are around 600 to 800 rupees per hour.

This is a very sophisticated and computerized machine so it needs high maintenance. We cannot reverse the transmitter as that would disturb its calibration. Secondly when we operate this machine, we have to properly level it with the leveler and then use it or else the angle of the beam or radiation angle will change. Thirdly, when we have finished using the receiver, we have to take the receiver back and keep it safely in the box. We have to keep the hydraulic pump welloiled and for that the tractor gear oil level should not fall otherwise it can burst and also damage the tractor.

We also have to take the controller back after we have used it as it can be damaged with rust or dust. All the other components like bearings, bushes have to be well oiled and well maintained and when we are not using it then we should cover it or else it can be damaged by dust All these things maintenance is very important.

The operator driving the tractor also has to take safety precautions like using the tractor on dry soil creates a lot of dust. So it is suggested that they use a mask while operating as we have to care for the health of the tractor operator.

Now, we would look at the benefits of laser leveler and why should the farmer adopt this machine. The first is that it increases the crop yield from 5 to 15%. The second benefit is that it saves about 25% to 43% water used for irrigation depending on field to field . It helps with water productivity from 16 to 60%. It also saves energy of around 24% in the sense that diesel consumption and running time of pump is less.

It improves the nutrient use efficiency by 10 to 15%. It helps increases the income of farmer by16 to 56%

It also reduces CO2 emissions by 11 to 16% as the use of laser leveler reduces diesel consumption for irrigation, tillage and the savings from fertilizers use.

Now we would look at the impact of laser leveler. It was first introduced in the year 2001 on a farmer’s field and as you can see in the graph, its units in operation have increased to 45000.

It has covered around 6 million hectares of land in India and is generating almost 350 man-days per person per unit per year of employment. If we can convert the 6 million hectares then it has generated around 40 million man-days employment. It has generated a lot of indirect employment in the form of manufacturing, spare parts and also a lot of skill development has taken place.

This has increased the production by 2 million tonne per year and with 0.5 tonne gain per hectare per year. So this increases food production, employment, water saving, energy saving and increased skill employment. This is a very beneficial technology and in the coming days, this will be looked as a milestone technology and a blessing which has benefited the farmer and our country.