Assessment of “Rubber wheel hoe weeder” for weeding efficiency in mustard crops and drudgery mitigation of farm women

Indian farm women do many difficult tasks and weeding of the crop is among them. It is a main drudgery prone activity which is mostly performed by farm women and to solve this problem Krishi Vigyan Kendra Barnala, as per its mandate conducted front line demonstration on “Improved rubber twin wheel hoe weeder” in mustard weeding. The basic objective of these demonstrations was to reduce drudgery with muscular stress and fatigue. Agriculture involves heavy efforts in terms of muscular strength and also intellectual aspects. Days are gone when farmers have only limited knowledge and resources to work with, now time has changed and farmers can access better tools for efficient working. Agriculture includes many activities and operations but in this paper, only weeding activity in mustard crop has taken. The work efficiency of the farm women was distinctly increased by skilled use of “improved rubber wheel hoe weeder” modified by KVK Barnala as is evident from the results of the demonstration. Thirty farm women were selected randomly for this study. The demonstration component included use of improved weeding implement (Twin Wheel Hoe), skill training and exposing advantages. The focus was to change the attitude, skill and knowledge towards recommended practices in the work. The women traditionally carried out weeding operation by using tools e.g. hand hoes or “khurpi” in squatting and bending position which decreases the work efficiency. In the recommended weeding practices, it was shown that the same amount of work could be done in almost half of the time and work efficiency was increased by 80 %, Farm women adopted the improved technique as it had increased the efficiency to work, reduced the drudgery and helped in avoiding bending or squatting posture. It lessened the exertion and fatigue to make the farm women comfortable. This is also a main drudgery prone activity and almost performed by women only. Keeping this in view the above effort has been made by KVK Barnala under Home Science/community science component to conduct On farm trial on drudgery reducing tools (Rubber wheel hoe weeder) for farm women which can also improve their worth efficiency.