Present farm technology provided harvesters to the farmers which are high cost and voluminous. They consume lot of fossil fuels and also costly to hire by marginal farmers. One of the major difficulties in using such harvester is that the straw is cut into pieces and the disposal of the dust is a problem for the farmer. He loses on two counts. Firstly, the hey is lost and creates shortages for feeding his cattle. Secondly, the straw dust created by the harvester is burnt in the fields, creating known and unknown adverse effects on the soil, environment and the life below the earth and above it.

Marginal farmers desire to have appropriate mechanization to resolve their problem of labour to manually harvest their fields. Yada Venkateshwar rao from Tiruvur Village, Dist Khammam developed such machine which is self propelled and cuts the paddy as is cut manually by a sickle and puts aside for collection manually. It harvests the paddy like cutting manually with sickle.

The Innovator Venkateshwar Rao used the three wheeler engine thus making it easily maintainable locally. It consumes one litre diesel for one hour and can harvest one acre. 8-10 acres per day can be harvested thus increasing the speed of harvesting and catering to the shortage of labour which is faced by the farmer. The performance of the Harvester has satisfaction amongst the farmer community and many are willing to buy it. Estimated cost is Rs 1.3 lakhs. Its cost of hiring would be cheaper than the present combined harvester. At present, the Innovator is geared up to supply the machines if sufficient working capital is provided to him as loan.

Venkateshwar Rao by his creative ability and good comprehension of the problem faced by millions of farmers across the Nation, innovated an affordable and appropriate machine for harvesting of paddy crops for the marginal farmers. Considering that he is a farmer and a school dropout, the compassion, empathy and samvedana with which he developed harvester deserves due recognition and encouragement. The impact it makes on the millions of farmers and their cattle is beyond computation as it would be recurring and cumulative.

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