Management of natural resources by using women friendly farm equipments

Agriculture is a backbone of Indian economy and about 70 per cent population is dependent upon agricultural sector and farm women contributes about 55–65 per cent in performing various agricultural operations and other activities. These farm women are doing arduous field operations along with household chores and mostly using traditional hand tools and gadgets. These tools are not only the source of drudgery but also a major cause of low efficiency in farm women and reduce the farm outputs. Hence, the emphasis was given to reduce the drudgery among farm women by introducing the women friendly farm equipments, which are specially designed for them. These farm equipments help in reducing drudgery, increasing efficiency of farm women and saving time. The equipments like improved sickle, weeder, maize sheller and hand drawn trolley were tested by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Ujjain in a cluster of villages. It was found that all the women friendly equipments were able to reducing drudgery from 35–67 per cent and also saved the time near about 3–4 hr/day. The perceived exertion was reduced by 1 to 2 on five point scale.