Present Status of Farm Power and Machinery Usage in Bangladesh

Abstract

Mechanization level in terms of usage of farm machinery and farm power in 22 Upazillas and 2 Unions of 13 districts were ascertained. Farm level recent data on machinery and power usage had been collected through questionnaire survey in addition to the previous data from secondary sources. The trend of population of most of the farm machinery continues to rise which got a boost up since late 80s with an increasing demand. Population of tractor, PT, open and close drum thresher, and irrigation pumps has been increased tremendously since then. Population of tractor, PT, seeder, combine harvester, and reaper almost doubled in 2014 over that in 2011. Other machineries such as high-speed rotary tiller, weeder, seeder, sprayer, maize sheller, winnower, USG applicator also got a hike (12% - 50%) in population during this period. Farm machinery like reaper, combine harvester, winnower, USG applicator, and seeder had been observed to be introduced during the recent years. Availability of farm power varied widely among the Upazillas under study and Upazilla wise average value of farm power usage was found to be 1.21 kW/ha. Considering accumulated cultivated area and power usage of all the selected areas, the present study showed that available power further escalated to 1.23 kW/ha by 2014 with an  increasing annual average rate of 0.052 kW/ha/yr since 1998 followed by a slower rate (0.021 kW/ha/yr) since 2007. The share of mechanical power was found to be prominent over human and animal power in almost all the study areas followed by animal and human power sources. A major portion, about 60 – 97% of the total farm power used in the study area was supplied by the mechanical source.