FARMING : THEN, NOW AND TOMORROW

From apes to human. Human life has been evolving since millions of  years and at the same time the practices to survive also evolved along with the technology. Food is like fuel to a human body to function well. Every individual on this planet can cook and prepare his supper to live his life. But the real credit goes to a farmer because it's them who cultivate food items which are further processed and cooked by us. 

Every country has got it's own style of farming. Every country on this planet uses different methods to cultivate different crops. 

In India a farmer follows 8 major steps to cultivate a crop.

The steps are same irrespective of crop being selected.

1.Crop Selection

2.Land Preparation

3.Seed Selection

4.Seed Sowing

5.Irrigation

6.Crop Growth

7.Fertilizing

8.Harvesting

The first three steps are to be done manually. Crop selection depends on the farmer. He/ she selects a crop based on requirements and his/ her financial ability to cultivate the crop. Sometime cultivation of few crops require more labour and lumosome of money.

Land preparation is basically studying the soil conditions to decide whether the soil is suitable to cultivate the crop being selected. There are no traditional techniques to do so. In India the government now has started various schemes to help farmers know their soil specifications by sending a sample of soil to the lab.

Besides crop selection and land preparation, seed selection is another major task to be performed with care. This is also dependent on the individual. 

In most parts of India people still use traditional techniques to cultivate their farm.

Seed sowing 

Seed sowing can be done manually and mechanically as well. To perform seed sowing manually one needs lot of skill because the seeds have to sown in an accurate manner not too deep and not on the surface, at the same time all the seeds have to sown at the same depth. So to avoid such issues most of them use ploughs to sow the seeds. For ploughing one needs man power and bulls to pull the plough. These days seed sowing is also done using machines. 

This technique can be done quickly with not much requirement of man power by just placing a funnel along with the ploughing machine. This reduces requirement of labour and save time.

Irrigation

Next step and the most important step is irrigation.

 Irrigation in India is basically done manually and it's done based on whether conditions. In some cases farmers completely rely on rainfall for irrigation sake. During land preparation one has to check ground water levels so that he/ she need not rely on rainfall. A farmer just turns on the water supply pump and irrigates his land but he/ she doesn't know whether the crops have got enough amount of water. 

So to know this moisture sensors can be used to detect moisture content in the soil. Along with the moisture sensors a gsm module has to programed to send an alert to the farmer about the moisture content. With this alert the farmer will turn on/off the water supply. Or if the farmer is not available at that moment the sensors can be programmed in such a way that water supply turn on and off depending on the mositure reading observed by the mositure sensors. One can turn of these sensors during rainfall in order to save water.

Harvesting

The next step is to fertilize the crops . This is also done manually without maintaing accuracy . Drones are now available at lowers costs and usage of Drones will also improve accuracy in spreading the fertilizer All  over the field .Another healthy techniques to be used is manure. Manure performs better than a fertilizer rather than reducing the quality of the crop. But fertilizers are necessary to kill the bacteria. It's better to reduce their usage inspite of completely avoiding them.

After few months...

By now the crop is ready to be harvested send it to the market. Harvesting is another important and a time taking process it has to be done in a precise manner and even within stipulated time because if the whether conditions change it will effect the farmer financially and mentally. 

Harvesting requires large amount of labour and time. Which increases cost.  To avoid such issues one should use machines to harvest them in time. A machine should be designed based on technique of harvesting for example if it's a carrot then the machine should be designed to pluck it or if it's paddy a cutter should be used. It depends on the type of crop and method of harvesting. The crop being harvested should be store should immediately transfered to  silos.

These techniques might be cost effective but the output is also high at the same time. This is only a one time investment and doesnot require any special maintenance.

A farmer is the only person on this planet who always strives to save mother nature.

 Let's support them by just reducing pollution by stopping usage of plastic and reducing the effect of global warming.

Go green....!! Save mother nature..!!

Thanks for reading...

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