Sustainable farming through mechanization: Development of a bund making machine

Abstract

As the decreasing rural population of Sri Lanka is becoming increasingly responsible for feeding the growing urban population, increase in productivity of agriculture has become an essential feature in stepping towards sustainability. As younger generation avoids the cultivation, the labour shortage has become very significant. To motivate the young people in to agriculture, mechanization plays a vital role. This paper describes about one such mechanization, which is done on replacing manual bund making process in low land paddy fields. Bund making is usually done in two steps using the mamotee; bund clearing and mud plastering. Hence two separate attachments have been developed for the two steps separately. For bund clearing, a simple cutter with a height adjusting mechanism has been developed and tested. This attachment is designed for a two-wheel tractor as it was the most preferred tractor among Sri Lankan farmers. A new concept was tested for bund plastering, as a direct attachment to the tractor. A closed rectangular channel which has a curve along its length has been suggested to convey mud towards the bund. The flowing ability of mud was supposed to be utilized in this new concept. Mechanizing the mud plastering process would be an entirely a new innovative concept and lot of empirical investigations are needed during the testing of the attachments. The two attachments were fabricated with a minimum cost and field-testing was conducted to check the proper functionality of the two attachments. The bund clearing attachment worked successfully though several modifications were to be made. The mud plastering concept failed during testing. Approximately about 30-fold productivity gain in terms of time consumption is expected with the introduction of this mechanization compared to the conventional methods currently used by the farmers.