CHANGING TREND
using their bullocks for sowing.
What Simhachalam is doing is a departure from the overall trend in the farm sector, where tractors and other machines have progressively replaced bullocks.
M L Sanyasi Rao, programme manager, Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), a non-profit that organised the sowing training using bullocks, says, “Almost every farm household in the region owns bullocks. We are trying to promote their use in farming as it makes economic and logistical sense for small farmers.” Besides Visakhapatnam, WASSAN is popularising the use of bullocks in three other Andhra Pradesh districts—Srikakulam, East Godavari and Vizianagaram.
In 1961, draught animals, more than 90 per cent of which were bullocks, met 71 per cent of a farm's energy requirement, shows an estimate by the Rural Technology Action Group of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. By 1991, the number came down to 23.3 per cent. The reduced usage resulted in a steady decline in bullock population. As per the latest livestock census, India has over 30 million bullocks employed as draught animals, which is almost half the number used in 1997 (see 'Constant drop').
“Following mechanisation, tractors were subsidised and governments favoured machines. Today, tractor firms have reached the doorstep of farmers, whereas there has not been much talk about the use of draught animal,” says M Din, project coordinator of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Increased Utilization of Animal Energy (AICRP), set up in 1987 under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the apex body for research
India's bullock* population has dropped by 45 per cent in the past two decades
and education in agriculture. While mechanisation has benefitted large farmers, who account for 15 per cent of the country's farmer population but own 75 per cent of the farmland, it has remained unaffordable for small and marginal farmers who own less than 2 ha.
In recent years, though, several regions in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra are seeing a revival in the use of bullocks. One of the major reasons behind the revival is India’s renewed focus on millets, especially after 2018, which the government declared as the year of millets.
“Millet production was earlier restricted to tribal-dominated regions, but after the government’s efforts to popularise millets for food and nutrition security, there has been an increase in demand,” Din says. This has made farmers interested in identifying ways to improve productivity. In Sangra, small and marginal farmers traditionally used to sow millets using the broadcast method, under which seeds are randomly spread on the field. The method is easy and requires less labour, but reduces crop yield. Now almost all
farmers in the region have embraced the line-sowing method. Sensing the shift, WASSAN developed while keeping in mind the weight and power of local bullock varieties.
In Raichur district of Karnataka, the University for Agricultural Sciences, one of the nine centres of AICRP, has designed several other implements for efficient use of bullocks. “We are trying to popularise spraying of pesticides with bullocks. The sprayer costs `90,000 and a 50 per cent subsidy is available from the state government. In Raichur, now bullocks are used in 30 per cent of the net sown area,” says K V Prakash, assistant agriculture engineer and in-charge of the AICRP centre in Raichur.
The bullock-drawn pesticide sprayer has also gained popularity among farmers of Beed and Jalgaon districts in Maharashtra. “It can spray up to 0.6 m in one go and takes 20-25 minutes to spray pesticides in 0.4 ha. Without it, we would spend around three hours to complete the process,” says Mahadev Rudraksh, a farmer from Patan Mandwa village in Beed. Rudraksh grows sorghum, soybean and pulses on his 1.6 ha farm and almost half of the 400-odd farmers in his village have shifted to using the