IITians build crop harvester for small farmers

New Delhi, Apr 23 (UNI) A simple to use crop harvester with no expenses on fuel could prove to be a boon to farmers with small holdings in the country.

Developed by some second year students of IIT, Delhi, a model of the low cost crop harvester was demonstrated at the open house session of IIT, Delhi, yesterday.

Operation of the machine requires no technical skill. All it needs is to push the machine through the row of crops ready for harvest. The technology consists of a horizontally placed fan with three blades in the form of sickles placed at the end of a hollow half cone. Mounted on wheels, when the machine is pushed the cone bunches the grain stalks together and the fan blades cut them.

"The cost of manufacture of one machine is around Rs 3500 but given the convenience it will be worth the money," Vinayak, a member of the design team, said.

"Though the farmers form the backbone of Indian GDP, the effort made for the improvement of agriculture is minimal and this is what inspired us to this innovation," Abhay, another member, added.

While manual cutting is labour intensive, slow and causes injuries, this machine, without using any external energy, makes the process easier, they said. "Indian farms are small sized and irregular shaped and the large combination machines are too unwieldy and costly for them. In contrast, this is easily manoeuvreable, small, hand driven, simple to operate, efficient and free of injury risks," the young team said.

Asked whether they had spoken about this innovation to farmers, they said since the harvest season is over this time, they would go to the villages and demonstrate it to farmers soon so that it would be used in the next harvest.

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