The human labor-based harvesting model in our country has at least three significant drawbacks: slower operational speed, increasingly higher wages, and more crop wastages leading to costlier inefficiencies. Additionally, it is estimated that there is 40% labor shortage during harvesting season. To meet these gaps, combine harvester is taking an instrumental role. It is addressing some of the utmost challenges prevailing in our agricultural landscape, i.e. fragmentation, shuttering, lodged paddy, and full rice straw utilization with great efficiency.
With a combination of six unique sensors, modern combine harvesters are now more dependable throughout various types of land and on-field hostilities. Variable gap between tillers can be grabbed by the harvester due to its intelligent sensors. Moreover, based on the land it can adjust the operations for precision harvesting. Thus it gains the ability to operate in dry, muddy, and waterlogged lands making it significantly convenient for multipurpose use (paddy and wheat).
Paddy loss is very low while using combine harvester because its sophisticated threshing system prevents shuttering. As a result, wastage from harvesting is minimized from 7% to 2% approximately. It can rotate 360-degree, which provides the advantage of turning the machine even in a small fragmented area as small as 15 decimal. However, an essential economical proposition of combine harvester emerges from its ability to provide full-straw which is used for household cooking as well as feeding cattle. From a financial aspect, a farmer can earn up to BDT 5,000-5,500 additionally by selling the straw collected from one-acre land in some places.
The easy-to-operate combine harvesters are getting adopted more rapidly due to a wide distribution channel, availability of spare parts, training facility for drivers with highly responsive customer care service. Moreover, ongoing policy support and government subsidy for farm mechanization are playing crucial roles for such adoption in different communities. At scale, more combine harvesters mean optimization by farmers’ cost minimization and income maximization.
Dr. F H Ansarey
Managing Director & CEO
ACI Agribusiness
