IIT-Madras, Farmers NGO Develops Cost-Effective Transportation System To Address Labour Shortage

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and a farmers' non-governmental organisation (NGO) have collaborated to develop a cost-effective agricultural transportation system to address a significant issue witnessed by farmers -- labour shortage.

The lightweight monorail-type transportation system can efficiently carry agricultural produce from the farm fields to collection spots near the farmlands. A team of IIT-Madras researchers, jointly with a farmers NGO, PothuVivasayeegalSangam, has successfully tested the prototype cableway system at a farm in Nanjai Thottakurichi village of the Karur district in Tamil Nadu, as per Press Information Bureau (PIB).

Transportation System To Address Labour Shortage

One of the significant issues plaguing the country's agricultural system is the shortage of manpower for farming activities. During the post-harvest period, the issue gets more intense when there is a significant requirement for the workforce to transport produce from the field to a nearby collection spot.

The newly developed system -- developed by Prof Shankar Krishnapillai of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the institute, together with PothuVivasayeegalSangam -- provides an economical and efficient solution to this problem.

Prof Krishnapillai highlighted the unique features of the system saying, "Indian farmers will face a severe shortage of labour in the coming years, especially in post-harvest operations. The simple agricultural transportation system is made in local workshops, from locally available components, based on the lightweight overhead rail concept. It can be easily installed on Indian farms and reduce labour requirements in transporting the produce. The system also has minimal environmental disturbance as it passes over the ground."

Advantages Of Deploying The System

The agricultural transportation system offers a simple and affordable solution to address the labour shortage issue in agrarian activities. As per estimates, a modest farm could employ 32 workers daily to transport farm produce to collection stations using the traditional manual head load-carrying method. However, with the deployment of this system, the number of labourers needed to do the same task may be lowered to four.

It also helps to avoid the bruising of fruits, primarily caused when crops are manually transferred overhead to collections spots. For instance, farmers incur a significant economic loss due to the bruising of bananas by manually carrying the harvest to the collection points.

Further, the system has a negligible influence on the environment because it takes up very little room to set up and doesn't damage the vegetation it goes through. Moreover, due to the considerably reduced energy consumption associated with going across rail, this transportation system only requires two people to operate it, one at each end.

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