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€