Abstract

Despite increased rice production and area coverage in several sub-districts, rice mechanization remains limited and falls short of potential due to a lack of skilled manpower, credit, policy support, land fragmentation, lack of customized tools, farm machinery access, legislation, and other related issues. Land size, cropping pattern, and market price are the major factors determining agricultural mechanization, and the average farm size per household in the main rice production plains of Gurafarda and Fogera is 2.40 ha and 0.89 ha, respectively. Mechanizing small and non-contiguous groups of small farms is against economies of scale because the continued shrinkage in average farm size will make it difficult for individual ownership of agricultural machinery and progressively more uneconomical.

Keywords: Utilization; Imported machinery; Agriculturalmachinery; Farm Machinery; Rice-based farming; Rice processing