Testing of Improved Sickles in Wheat Harvesting

Farm women were provided with improved sickles and testing was done for the productivity and ease at work with improved sickles over the traditional sickles...

Wheat harvesting is one of the important farm activity predominantly performed by rural women in Haryana. During harvesting season, she spends nearly 8-9 hours daily to perform the activity. The aim of present study was to evaluate the performance of improved sickles over existing sickle in terms of output and reduced drudgery. Experiment was conducted on 20 rural women aging 20-45 years of age with four sickles comprising one conventional sickle (S₀) and three improved sickles viz. S₁, S₂ and S₃. S₀ sickle was the heaviest measuring 234 gm followed by S₂ (217 gm) and S₃ (198 gm). S₁ sickle was the lightest in weight (186 gm). Blades of all the improved sickles were made up of high carbon steel except for local sickle that was made up of iron. Regarding physical fitness index, two-fifth of the respondents had high average physical index and good physical fitness index (40%). Output was found maximum for S₂ sickle (64.9 kg.). S₂ sickle resulted 4.8 percent more output over conventional sickle resulting 16.4 percent increase in area covered. Average working heart rate (107.5 beats/min) and corresponding energy expenditure (8.37 kj/min) was found minimum for S₂ sickle. Total cardiac cost of work for all the sickles ranged from 1020 beats to1283 beats. Average TCCW for S₀ sickle was 1283.5 beats. Reduction in TCCW with all sickles over S₀ sickle was maximum for S₂ sickle (20.5%) followed by S₁ sickle (20.4%). S₂ sickle resulted minimum grip fatigue after the activity (3.8 percent). Farmwomen adopted maximum of squatting posture (7 times) followed by bending posture (4 times). Regarding musculo-skeletal problems, maximum reduction in pain was reported in thighs (43.3%) followed by wrist joint (42.3%), shoulder joint (41.8%), feet (33.5%) and neck (30%).

objectives

1. To study the physical characteristics of the women involved in wheat harvesting.
2. To assess the physiological and biomechanical workload of the women using existing and improved sickles.

METHODOLOGY

The study was carried out in the month of April-May on 20 women subjects for half an hou.r Wheat harvesting activity was carried on by the selected subjects with one conventional (S_o) and three improved sickles viz., falcon plastic handle (S₁), falcon wooden handle (S₂) and naveen sickle (S₃). To maintain uniformity in the experimental data, subject having normal basic physiological parameters. The experiment was started at 8.00 a.m. in wheat fields. Harvesting of wheat was done for 30 minutes with each sickle. Output parameters and other ergonomic parameters were measured.

Assessment of Ergonomic stress

Physiological Stress. Heart rate is an indicator of cardiac stress due to physical workload. Heart rate was recorded after every minute for five minutes during experiment using polar heart rate monitor. From the average value of heart rate, energy expenditure, total cardiac cost of work (TCCW) and physiological cost of work (PCW) for wheat harvesting was calculated with the help of formulae given by Varghese et al. (1995) as below:

Energy expenditure (KJ/min.) =0.159xAHR – 8.72

TCCW = Cardiac Cost of Work (CCW) + Cardiac Cost of Recovery (CCR)

CCW = Average Heart rate (AHR) x Duration of Activity

AHR = Average Working Heart Rate – Average Resting Heart Rate

CCR = (Average recovery heart rate–Average resting heart rate) x Duration of Activity

PCW = TCCW/Total Time of Activity

Biomechanical Stress. Biomechanical stress includes grip fatigue and postural stress.

Grip fatigue: Grip dynamometer was used to measure grip strength at rest (Sr) and after the work (Sw) separately for the right and left hand. Grip fatigue was calculated as under:

Grip fatigue (%) = Sr – Sw/Sr x 100

Musculo-skeletal Problems. A human body map was used to identify incidences of musculo-skeletal problems in different parts of the body. Five-point scale ranging from very severe pain (5) to very mild pain (1) was used to quantify the stress on muscles used in work and then mean scores were calculated.

complete paper is here....

MY article in social welfare

My article published in social welfare...
it was about the sanitation of the villages...
in rural areas it was observed that nobody cares about the cleanness of the vicinity of the houses.the inside of the house was clean ..in this article the rural people were advised about the cleaning of the village itself to live healthy.....
all the strategies explained were also tried by the villagers...




xoxo

Visited several villages to explore farmwoman's hardships....

Irrrigation canal at village farmland....



visited village ........but not ...adopted for .....our projectwork..

sun-set at the village above...

Gurudwara....at Pinjore village of Ambala district of Haryana...

we had our lunch(in lunger) over here during our survey work...

Hardships of rural farm women are innumrable and their means of entertainments are ......NONE like any urbanites...

Poor women!

God may bless them with prosperity equal to their hardwork!

FARMWOMEN IN ---- HARYANA RURAL AREAS

FARMWOMEN IN ---- HARYANA RURAL AREAS

Working with veil on their face, this is tragic condition for rural farm-women to work with.
Their work and leisure......

Work or toil is necessary to sustain life and leisure provides a person with a chance to relax and recover from the stress and fatigue of everyday life. It also provides a creative outlet and an important opportunity to establish and maintain social networks. Despite the utter necessities of leisure in everybody’s life it was observed in a broader study of farmwomen’s life in Haryana that for women and girl children in rural farm families in Haryana, life means work. They toil long hours in the fields, tend domestic livestock, gather fuel wood, haul water, prepare and cook food, take care of children and manage the house. Farmwomen typically work longer hours than farm men: an average of 10 hours more each week during peak crop season in Haryana (AICRP Report: 1997).yet women’s work is not included in national income accounts. If women’s work in and around the house were monetized, the International Labour Organization (ILO) reckons their collective contribution to the world economy would easily top $4 trillion a year.
An intensive survey of 900 households in rural Haryana (AICRP Report.1985) found that when both subsistence production and market production were considered, women, despite having two-thirds less cash income then men, still contributed 15 per cent amore money to the monthly household budget. In general, men spent a disproportionate amount of income from cash crops or wages of the monthly household budget; they spend on their leisure activities, while farmwomen seldom spend on their own wants and needs.
It is my personal experience that leisure experience for Haryana rural farmwomen is gendered and culturally situated. Reason behind it is that women's activities are mostly obligatory and regulated by persistent institutions of culture, religion, and customs where their freedom of action and choice is very limited. Again they have spatial and physical restrictions on movements and their activities are primarily confined within their ghar (home), nohra (cattle shed), bada (a place to make cow-dung cakes) and khet (farm). It was noted that in rural farm families men spent a disproportionate amount of income from cash crops or wages on relative luxuries, including tobacco, liquor and leisure activities. While women restrict themselves to spend on their own leisure, may be by nature or by inherited norms.

How of the study….
The survey was conducted under All India Coordinated Research Project of Home –Science Discipline and financed by ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) and was carried out by the research team of the Department of Family Resource Management of Home Science College, CCS HAU, Hisar, Haryana. The research protocol was provided by the committee for Home science in Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR).
Time use survey pattern included in the protocol does not have any social-cultural bias as the information collected refers only to how individuals, spend their time since the information is collected for all the twenty four hours and no activities is likely to be missed out, that is why we are able to extract the leisure component of rural farmwomen.
The survey has been conducted every year since 1997, and the 2000 survey was the third. Survey was carried from three geographical zones viz. zone 1 arid- zone, zone II sem- arid, and zone III dry sub-humid. Villages Shah pur and Kirtan from Hisar District (zone I) Villages Deoban and Devigarh were selected from Kaithal District (zone II); villages Mahobbatpur and Pinjokhara were selected from Ambala District (zone III). In all 900 households were selected representing the five landholding farm families (landless, small, medium and large) proportionately. For all farmwomen in the age group of 20-40 years, were selected to assess their work profile. Their leisure time activities recorded were, chatting with friends, preparation of special food items, stitching, knitting and crocheting, embroidery, dari making marketing, and kitchen gardening (activities performed by 60 percent of farm women were taken and rest of the activities such as reading, watching TV and many others were excluded due to generalization constraints), all these were listed in home activities in the protocol.

Farm women bringing fodder

Laborious farm-women true to their work!

Farm-women perform several perform various animal rearing activities..

and fodder collection is one of them>

women bringing fodder from her field, usually farmhouses with land in their possession grow green fodder for their animals, and mostly women bring the head-load of fodder after cutting it from their fields, and after bringing the fodder at their houshold premises, they cut it with chaff cutter themselves, and feed their animals.

Here the farm women (mostly from landless families bring fodder(weeds) they collect every bit of it from the fields of landlords, travelling long distances from one field to other, made bundles of it and bring it home cut it and feed their animals.

No dought its free of cost but it takes long hours and consumes lots of energy of the farm women, and costs on their health, causing fatigue and pain on their body parts.

An ergonomic cost of work on bringing fodder when calculated it was very heavy on the scale.

Mother Earth by Henry Van Dyke

Mother Earth by Henry Van Dyke

To day's Quote

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

------Albert Einstein