Early Trends, Current Status and Future Prospects of Farm Mechanization in Asia

Abstract

During the last five decades Asia has made considerable development in the field of agricultural machinery. During the year 1960 the condition of mechanization was very poor and most of the farm operations were performed manually. A positive correlation between the farm power availability and the productivity was observed during past 3 decades for several Asian nations including China, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. The previous trends have shown that the Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have experienced only the selective farm mechanization which was found to be initially limited to the use of heavy tractors only. In addition to the full-scale tractors, China, India and Bangladesh have adopted the power tillers and small-scale tractors to co-op with the fragmented small farms, however, in Pakistan the current inclination is towards the bigger tractors. The Asian countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Cambodia have relatively low mechanization index and lags behind the other neighboring Asian countries. At present, the farm machinery sector has become much better and Asia now has the largest sales of farm machinery in the world. The sales of farm machinery are even better than North America which is the pioneer in this sector. Besides this incredible development in the field of agricultural machinery there are still many Asian countries where most of the farm operations are performed manually thus resulting in the poor crop production compared to the other mechanized regions of the world. During the last five decades Asia has made considerable development in the field of agricultural machinery. During the year 1960 the condition of mechanization was very poor and most of the farm operations were performed manually. A positive correlation between the farm power availability and the productivity was observed during past 3 decades for several Asian nations including China, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. The previous trends have shown that the Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have experienced only the selective farm mechanization which was found to be initially limited to the use of heavy tractors only. In addition to the full-scale tractors, China, India and Bangladesh have adopted the power tillers and small-scale tractors to co-op with the fragmented small farms, however, in Pakistan the current inclination is towards the bigger tractors. The Asian countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Cambodia have relatively low mechanization index and lags behind the other neighboring Asian countries. At present, the farm machinery sector has become much better and Asia now has the largest sales of farm machinery in the world. The sales of farm machinery are even better than North America which is the pioneer in this sector. Besides this incredible development in the field of agricultural machinery there are still many Asian countries where most of the farm operations are performed manually thus resulting in the poor crop production compared to the other mechanized regions of the world.