Advancements in Mechanizational Input for Sustainable Development of North Hill Farming Ecosystem

Agriculture is one of the most important professions by using the natural resources to provide food and fibre for livelihood. In hills, it is much more evident as most of the hill population totally depend on farming and doing all the operation in difficult terrains with limited resources. On the other hand, population pressure is increasing day by day and land becomes scarcer due to more infrastructure development. The productivity is quite less and resources are very poor due to difficult terrain, wide variation in slopes and altitude, extreme cold winter. Hill agriculture continues to be animate energy intensive. As a result, adoption of improved and modern technologies commercially available is difficult. These problems resulted less people entering the farming profession especially young generation and most of the land are facing the challenge of a workforce shortage. Mechanization and modernization plays an important role in Indian agriculture but on the other hand hills are still neglected. Now a day's hill farmers are adopting few improved technologies such as small tillers/weeder, manual seed drill, thresher, maize sheller, serrated sickle etc. These other equipment/tools have shown good performance in saving time from 20–50 per cent compared to traditional system. Further, there is a need to introduce sensor based technology, drones and robotics for the agriculture. Custom hiring of power tiller/weeder with all equipment have a good potential in agriculture for generating employment through the rural youths. Still more studies have to be carried out to identify appropriate technology if available in market as well as developed suitable technology for various farm operation as per the need of hill farming. The uses of modern technological agricultural inputs and methods such as improved seeds, fertilizers along with advanced mechanization through improved ploughs, tractors, harvesters, irrigations systems may help in raising productivity in hill farming system.