Labour Demand and Labour-saving Options: A Case of Groundnut Crop in India

Groundnut is a labour-intensive crop, especially for operations like sowing, weeding, harvesting, and drying. But, of-late, due to timely unavailability of labour, many farmers are not able to exercise timely operations resulting in low yield realization. The present study conducted in two major groundnut-growing states, viz. Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, has revealed that farmers employ more human labour in weeding and harvesting operations in groundnut than in other operations. The practise of manual decortication and stripping is followed by a larger number of farmers in Andhra Pradesh than in Gujarat, indicating less mechanization in the former. For weeding, though, the human labour-use in weedicide + bullock intercultivation + hand weeding technique is almost half of that of the bullock inter-cultivation + hand weeding, only 13 per cent of the farmers practise this labour-saving technique and hence this method should be disseminated in both the regions to reduce human-labour demand. In Andhra Pradesh, for all the operations in groundnut cultivation except harvesting, the cost as well as labour-use has been reduced substantially due to use of partial/complete mechanization methods. Hence, the necessary infrastructure (labour-saving machineries) should be created at the village or block level to reduce the human-labour demand.