A study conducted byNITK Surathkalhas concluded that to date only 45% of farming in India is mechanised, out of which around 20% is semi-mechanised, where farmers use both manual labour and machinery.
The study titled Distribution and Dividends of Mechanised Farming in India was conducted byPradyot Ranjan Jena, associate professor, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management, NITK Surathkal. It was co-authored byPurna Chandra Tanti, a PhD scholar from NITK. The two-year-long study that has analysed various data from more than 20 states of the country was published recently in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, a leading journal.
The study took a sample size of 42,152 households and other data available with the central government. The study also points out that the adoption rate of mechanised farming is still low, and that its distribution is uneven in India.
The impact evaluation estimates show that the adoption of tilling implements such as tractors and power tillers has the biggest positive impact on net agricultural income, which is 31% higher compared to non-adopters. Recently, there has been a surge in small and medium-sized machines in the south, east, and north-eastern regions.