Thread: India: Moving Ahead in Ag. Mechanization

While US farming slowly shifts to other countries because of high labor costs, even Third World countries like India discover the necessity for mechanized harvesting.


By Mary MacArthur, Camrose bureau
December 9, 2010
http://www.producer.com/Farm-Living/Art ... ?aid=30529
Western Producer reporter Mary MacArthur continues her travels across India, exploring the land many say could become the next big market for Canadian farmers.



JABALPUR, INDIA

It’s not lack of new varieties or lack of money for seed and fertilizer that plagues Indian farmers.

It’s a labour shortage.

It may be surprising that a country of more than one billion people has a labour shortage, but every day families are moving from rural villages to the cities in hopes of a better life. Few young people want to tie their lives to the backbreaking work of Indian farms.

Thousands of acres of rice and grain are still harvested and seeded by a hoe and hand or bullock and a simple disc. Workers harvest with a sickle, plants are tied into bundles and the seed is thrashed by bashing the grain on a webbed table.

The shortage of workers willing to spend their days in the field seeding and harvesting has many farmers selling their bullocks and renting or buying tractors.

Ranjit Singh of Gazipur, Viharsi, is one of them.

Singh and his family used to take two to three months to cultivate and seed their 48 acre farm with two bullocks. It now takes 10 days to do the same work with a tractor.

“Now it’s an easier job,â€

google Monsanto India Farmer Suicide and you will get pages of another side to this story. This is a puff piece waste of time.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... o_in_India

When you combine it with knowledge that even the Pope is supporting GMO's when the people are wise to not want it:

http://www.naturalnews.com/030807_the_P ... z18rQTOr7q

Wikileaks cable reveals U.S. conspired to retaliate against European nations if they resisted GMOs

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_GMOs_ ... z19cZ3pYQS

It appears to be more about food control rather than food safety.

The point is that even less developed countries recognize the need to automate wherever they can. Our enthrallment to imported labor, because of liberal legal activism, will eventually relegate us to secondary status.

How about checking out the USDA report I provided a link to?