While the COVID-19 pandemic has upended all of the lives in ways that were never expected, it brought considerable growth to the agriculture sector in the country. Taking note of this encouraging trend, the Agriculture Machinery Centre (AMC) in Paro recently developed several farming tools that would increase productivity and reduce drudgery.
The AMC has improvised the power tillers and tractors, which are usually used for ploughing the fields. With the added mechanised parts such as the bed maker tool and the plastic mulch layer, they can play a major role in farm diversification.
The bed maker tool can lend a helping hand to the farmers in forming bed-like farms, an agriculture technique, where soils are gathered and raised from their existing level.
Following this process, the plastic mulch layer can be utilised to cover the bed farms with plastic mulch. These model mechanised tools are user-friendly across the country.
“These farm tools come along with tractors and tillers in other countries but nowhere. So, we developed them here as well. Since the tools are cheap and user-friendly, we hope many more will take up mass farming,” said Kinga Norbu, the Programme Director of the AMC.
That aside, the centre has come up with an automatic system for greenhouse farming. The sensor will keep tabs on the humidity, temperature and irrigation in the greenhouses.
If the sensor detects anything paranormal say high humidity, it will alert the farmers via cell phones.
“The farmer need not go to the farms and monitor the irrigation, humidity and temperature. It can be done on their phones from any part of the world,” said Meghna Upreti, the Agriculture Engineer at the AMC.
The Agriculture Engineer further explained, “The system is integrated with cloud system using the internet and control the moderation through this application in the greenhouse.”
The AMC has practically tested these farm machine prototypes and proved successful. It now plans to hand over them to the Farm Machinery Corporation Limited for commercialisation. The AMC also developed a buckwheat de-husking machine, direct seeder and mini tillers.
If shown effective, these model agriculture machines would be dubbed a key contributor to the evolution of the agriculture sector in Bhutan.
Namgay Wangchuk, Paro
Edited by Pema Lhaden
