Evaluation of Human Energy Consumption in Paddy Cultivation Practices

Abstract

As the majority of the framers are small and marginal in India accounts for almost 85%, the farming practices are usually doing manually. These manual practices demand much energy consumption from the farmers which ultimately results in the reduced efficiency, productivity of work. The objective of the study is to evaluate the Energy Expenditure Rate (EER), Cardiac Cost of Work (CCW), Cardiac Cost of Recovery (CCR), Total Cardiac Cost of Work (TCCW), and Physiological Cost of Work (PCW) in paddy cultivation practices. Sample size of 10 per activity was taken for the present study in the East and West Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. For all the components (EER, CCW, CCR, TCCW, and PCW), heart rate was taken at three different intervals viz. resting phase, working phase, and recovery phase. Each activity in the paddy cultivation was standardized to five minutes. Results found that EER was found to be very high (180.71%), (183.11%) in transplanting activity and threshing activity among female-dominated and male-dominated activities respectively. Similarly, CCW (245bpm, 240bpm); CCR (57.85bpm, 56.62bpm); TCCW (302.85bpm, 296.62bpm); PCW (60.57bpm, 59.32bpm) values were found high in the threshing activity which ranked first among male dominated activities and transplanting activity among female dominated activities. It can be concluded that farmers can opt the tools that are less energy-demanding. Such type of tools is drum seeder, improved sickle, Dapog method of paddy transplanting, etc. Extension agents can suggest the farmers about improved tools that are at low operational cost and can give maximum efficiency and productivity.