Dr. Maharani Din, Director, Center Institute for Agricultural Engineering (CIAE) said: different types of machines can reduce the time, labors, money and increase the agriculture production of farmers in terms of annual net income.

Addressing the farmers of Korkru tribe during the exposure visit to CIAE from June 20-23, 2019 at Bhopal, he shared the importance of mechanization in the agriculture sector and thirty years CIAE intervention to develop the strength of farmers in mechanization. Unavailability of the timely skill workforce in agriculture sectors affects the agricultural production, CIAE has addressed this need by developing several types of machines in the last three decades to provide an automated solution to this need.

The exposure was organised in coordination with CIAE and Caritas India SABAL programme to strengthen the technical potential of Korku farmers and grassroot staff to increase the technical knowledge of cultivation practices through various types of millets sower and other equipment’s, which is developed by CIAE, Bhopal. Dr. Maharani Din, Director of CIAE, Dr. K. P. Singh, In charge of Engineering Department, Dr. Vikram Jyoti, Eng. Mr. Satya Prakash Kumar facilitated the exposure along with Mr. Robin George, Program Manager of SABAL.

SABAL is very closely working with Korku tribes of Melghat and Khandwa tribal region of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh for strengthening nutrition and health status through diversification of food and indigenous crops. Minor millet is the major indigenous crop of the tribal region, but last three decades its production and cultivation area has been reduced due to increasing cash crops and unavailability of knowledge, technology, and resources. SABAL is taking efforts to revive minor millets to increase cultivation area and production in the SABAL program area.

Highlighting CIAE Journey, Dr. Vikram Jyoti shared the role of the institute in the agriculture sector to increase agriculture production. Mr. Robin George, Program Manager of SABAL program, briefed about Caritas India’s five-decade journey and development. He also shared about Caritas India’s interventions in rural India as well as special interventions in disaster management, poverty elimination, natural resource management and effective advocacy process for getting rights and entitlements to marginalized.

Mr. Ramesh Kumar Sahani from CIAE shared the present scenario of the agriculture sector, issues, and challenges and how to increase the agricultural production by various available machines and how it is working.

All the participants visited CIAE field under the guidance of Dr. Balaji Nandede. He shared the cultivation practices and operations of various millets sowers, differences of inclined and vertical types of millet sower, advantage and disadvantage of both types millet sower, farmers and staff actively participated in operation of millet sower, how to maintain the millet sower, basic needs of millet sower, how to develop comparative plots of millet for effective production of millets, as well as shared the details of other machines like seed drill, types of cultivators, planters, tractor plough, harrow’s etc. Dr. Balaji shared the detailed operation, basic needs, various uses of the machines in different parameters and different condition, eg. Soil, moisture, land preparation, etc.

All the participants actively participated and learned about the operation of various machines, basic maintenance and repairing and how to increase agriculture production and reduce the time, Labor and money.

A demonstration session on the effective use of machineries in the intercultural operations, demonstration on various types of spraying tools and equipment’s, crop harvesting technologies, post-harvest techniques, effective use of renewable energy in agriculture sector, improved techniques of nursery development, and mulching practices helped farmers to get in-depth knowledge of the farming system. Dr. L.K. Sinha gave the overview of Soyabean processing unit and shared the complete operation of Soyabean processing, byproducts, and marketing strategy by the various demonstration.