ABSTRACT

A study was conducted in 2019 to assess the impacts of agriculture mechanization in Palpa district of Nepal. Two hundred and twenty farmers who have been the beneficiaries of mechanization programs launched by any of the three different tiers of government and other non-governmental organizations were selected randomly by adopting snowball method and interviewed. Majority (72.3%) of the farmers of the study area were found adopting mini tiller as the result of which the bullock driven plough was found almost replaced by it. Majority (92.7 %) of the farmers had experienced increase in cost of production for first and second year and decrease in cost of production afterwards. Most of the farmers experienced increase in working efficiency and improvement in the living standard after the adoption of machines in different agriculture operations. Agriculture mechanization was found having positive impacts in productivity of agriculture products because majority (89%) of the farmers experienced increase in productivity of their agriculture products after mechanization. Assuming those farmers who did not experienced any increase in productivity of their agriculture products (11%) as 100% majority (43.5 %) of them had pointed out lack of technical skills to operate machines as the major factor responsible for it. Therefore, the concerned authorities should be focused in proper arrangements of trainings and capacity building programs for farmers to operate those machines in addition to purchase and distribution of machines for the transformation of existing traditional agriculture into commercial, modern and mechanized agriculture.

KEYWORDS

cost of production, mechanization, palpa, productivity, working efficiency