Drudgery reduction of farm women using Naveen sickle

Abstract

Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh has Rice-Wheat cropping pattern in which wheat is the main and most important crop. Harvesting of wheat crop is very drudgery prone task in agriculture domain performed by farm women. It is performed solely by farm women through traditional iron made sickle. It is full of drudgery prone and energy intensive activity in wheat harvesting. The present investigation study the existing traditional sickle used by farm women in the wheat harvesting of Ghazipur district in Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, FLD was conducted to develop farm women friendly sickle for reducing drudgery. It was further replaced with improved sickle i.e. Naveen Sickle in FLD considering the dimensions and ergonomic aspects. 30 farm women were selected from two villages of Ghazipur district for demonstration of Naveen Sickle. And further study was conducted to compare existing sickle and Naveen sickle in wheat harvesting. It was noticed that improved Naveen sickle resulted higher harvesting area and efficiency than the existing sickle. The improved sickle is highly acceptable among farm women. The result found that improved sickle was helpful in reducing the drudgery level, time saving and cost up to 34 per cent as compared to traditional sickle.