Journal for Research | Volume 03| Issue 05 | July 2017 ISSN: 2395-7549
New High Performance Sugarcane Plantation Equipment Sameer S Kulkarni Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical Engineering B.L.D.E.A’s Dr. P G Halakatti College of Engineering and Technology, Vijyapur, Karnataka, India
Rakesh Kulkarni UG Student Department of Mechanical Engineering B.L.D.E.A’s Dr. P G Halakatti College of Engineering and Technology, Vijyapur, Karnataka, India
Rajendra Sanal UG Student Department of Mechanical Engineering B.L.D.E.A’s Dr. P G Halakatti College of Engineering and Technology, Vijyapur, Karnataka, India
Sachin Patil UG Student Department of Mechanical Engineering B.L.D.E.A’s Dr. P G Halakatti College of Engineering and Technology, Vijyapur, Karnataka, India
Abstract A study has been carried out to develop sugarcane plantation equipment for performing cultivation operations accurately with increase in efficiency and by reducing cultivation cost of sugarcane per acre. This equipment should be attached to tractor to perform operations. It is provided with lining attachment, container to store seeds, seat for farmer to sit, closing parts, and wings for budding soil. This equipment allows traditional methods and provides all operations in single equipment, reducing cost by 75% with more accuracy. The one of advantage of equipment is that assembly and dis-assembly can done easily by single person. Keywords: Lining, Closing Part, Budding _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ I.
INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy, and from history it was said that an agriculturist is an entrepreneur who contributes for economic development of country. The agriculture supports as a measure source of income in our country. Even though agriculture plays important role in economics of country, but cultivating of land decreasing drastically because of economic reforms. Thus it is necessary that, a farmer has to adopt modern technologies to improve agriculture with a present situation to increase productivity with less investment. So in this regard from survey in agriculture it is revealed that most of the expenditure in agriculture is due to cultivation of crops rather than harvesting. The Cultivation is also known as tilling or soil refinement, where digging is done to existing soil bed for better preparation of planting the crops. This can be done by using tractor, power tiller or hand tools like a shovel or soil fork. After soil loosening for every crop, it is necessary to make proper alignment of seeds sowing. Later seeds which has been sowed to be covered with soil for necessary growth. So in this regard we had developed equipment which can perform work of sugarcane cultivation process efficiently. From traditional method it was observed that a farmer is used to do cultivation of sugarcane with labors in uneconomic manner. In order to overcome problem faced by formers in sugarcane cultivation. We had developed equipment which can perform some of cultivation processes simultaneously. II. LITERATURE SURVEY Dr. Ankasala Samba Siva Rao[1] In view of sugar cane, high requirements of labor, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides and the inevitability of time found and also transportation cost of production is much higher than the other crops. The expenditure involved in various stages from ploughing to the maturity of crop is fixed cost. The expenditure measured on harvesting and transport is variable cost. Though the variable cost is related to the quantity of yield, the fixed cost remains the same irrespective of the quantity of yield. This implies the farmers have to incur a compulsory minimum of Rs. 15,000/- to 20,000/- per acre irrespective of the yields. This is a peculiar problem encountered by the sugarcane growers when compared to the other crops, where fixed cost is low compared to sugarcane. The most of fixed cost on sugarcane is for soil loosening, seeding and leveling the soil. Gomateesingh [2] From case study we came to know that sugarcane is one of the most important crops of the Uttar Pradesh but in spite of this the largest area is shared by the cereals. Here farmers are following traditional farming system, which does not provide adequate income for their good living. There is a need to develop area under sugarcane, to yield more, low cost technology to bring down of the cost of cultivation. NetsanetAyeleeal [3] The results of study revealed that sett spacing influences sugarcane yield. Therefore, it is recommended that should use the intra-row spacing of 10 cm between setts for all three varieties instead of the conventional ear-to-ear 5 cm All rights reserved by www.journal4research.org
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New High Performance Sugarcane Plantation Equipment (J4R/ Volume 03 / Issue 05 / 002)
overlapping intra-row sett spacing that currently using. This is because the spacing of 10 cm between sets ensures economy of planting. So in this view we come to know that spacing in one of the influenced part of yielding. From survey it is revealed that the most of expenditure in sugarcane is done on cultivation rather than harvesting. By visiting some of villages in our district we came to know that there is no such kind of equipment which can give better improvement in cultivation process. The common problems identified that skilled labor for cultivation of sugar cane, less utilization of modern technologies and high Labor cost. On the basis of this suggestion given by the farmers, we motivated to make agricultural equipment which can give complete atomization of cultivation process of sugarcane. III. FABRICATION OF EQUIPMENT All components of equipment are manufactured by fabrication processes such cutting, welding, grinding etc. The basic components of equipment are plugging, sowing, and closing part, seat, container and frame. Each parts of component are designed taking mild steel and wood as material .And the other process carried in the project is forging to prepare sowing and leveling blades. The basic size of equipment is 1500mm x 1950mm x 1500mm.The measure advantage of our equipment is that the process of digging, placing a seeds and closing the soil is done simultaneously by maintaining required distance between seeds in the land depending upon farmer requirement. And also it is following traditional method of sugarcane cultivation with atomization.
Fig. 1: Complete Equipment
Lining The front side of equipment is provided with lining attachment. It is known fact in sugarcane that the seeds are to be placed at suitable distance i,e around 3 or 4 or 5ft depending upon seeds and as well as farmer requirement. In traditional method this process is followed by manually with help of labours. But in our equipment to seeding sugarcane it is not necessary to make arrangement of required lining, thus attachment provided will carry lining with required distance between rows of lining. Since equipment is provided with fasteners at different positions to adjust distance. A taper blade of 450 angle are provided at the tip of attachment to dig the soil of required depth. Container A container designed for to keep seeds of sugarcane and can dropped easily to field through passage aside by container. It has been designed by considering sugar cane which is having high weight available in our area. Closing part As soon as seeds are dropped from the passage, an attachment provided so called closing part will close seeds as per requirement of deposition of soil. The closing part is provided with adjustable wings which can rotate from 900-1800 rotation. These wings close the seeds and as well as provides budding of soil an either side of seeds. IV. PERFORMING THE OPERATIONS According to traditional method farmers are making required path for seeding sugarcane with help of tractors and by manually. Later a farmer is to keep seeds of sugarcane at digged part by maintaining improper distance between seeds. Then, with the help of labor a seeds are closed by mud .But from survey we came to know that doing all these above mentioned operations requires more time, labor and inaccurate manner. But our equipment carries all these work simultaneously by maintaining required distance between seeds and also between rows. This equipment reduces time, cost of operation, and also maintains more accuracy with minimum error. The other advantage is that even fertilizers can also be added during this process. All rights reserved by www.journal4research.org
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New High Performance Sugarcane Plantation Equipment (J4R/ Volume 03 / Issue 05 / 002)
Fig. 2: Equipment in field
Our equipment basically contains some of important parts such as container, seat, ploughing blades and soil closing blades. The whole equipment is connected to tractor to carryout work with efficient way. The process of equipment starts with ploughing asper the requirement of farmers i,e a distance required between two rows of seeds for planting. From labor a seeds are dropped from container to land through pipes continuously by sitting on seat. Simultaneously it is followed by closing blades to cover soil over seeds. A necessary height will be provided on front side of equipment to have required depth of digging. While dropping a care will be taken to sugarcane pieces, which are having growing eyes. So that all seeds should grow in the field. V. CONCLUSION The sugarcane plantation equipment can be used successfully due to following reasons It makes faster operations with more accuracy Low cost operations with one time investment All operations of lining, seeding and closing of soil simultaneously of sugarcane cultivation processes. The whole process of cultivating is done by making atomization. The proper accurate distance can be maintained between two seeds according to the farmers’ requirement. It is specially used for Sugarcane lands. But it can be implemented for the other crops such as turmeric and also for applying fertilizers to seeds. Only ploughing can be done with same equipment for different crops By traditional method it came to know that ten labors are required to work continuously for 8hrs to cultivate one acre of land. i, e. the labor cost for one acre land is around 4000 by assuming 400Rs for each labor .And before cultivating a rows has to be made for seeds which cost around 1000Rs.But, our equipment can perform the cultivation process with 2labors through tractor within 2 hrs. Comparison among traditional method and our Equipment From traditional method total cost =5000/Our Equipment 1) Total number of labors required = 2 2) Total time taken to cultivate one acre of land = 2hrs 3) Cost of each labor = Rs 400/4) Total cost of labor =2 × 400 = Rs800/5) The approximate Cost of tractor work to cultivate for 2hrs including its maintenance = Rs 400/Total cost with our equipment=Labor cost + Tractor cost=800+400=Rs 1200/The amount spent to cultivate one acre of land with this equipment is approximately Rs 1200 whereas with traditional method it is around Rs 5000.So this equipment is more efficient than the traditional method. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Dr. Ankasala Samba Siva Rao “Input Use and Cost of Cultivation of Sugarcane – A Study in Telangana Region of Andhra Pradesh” IOSR Journal Of Economics And Finance (IOSR-JEF) E-ISSN: 2321-5933, P-ISSN: 2321-5925.Volume 5, Issue 5. (Sep.-Oct. 2014), PP 67-74 Gomatee singh “An empirical study of economics of sugarcane cultivation and processing based farming in UttarPradesh” Sky Journal of Agricultural Research Vol. 2(1), pp. 7 - 19, January, 2013 Netsanet Ayele, Abiy Getaneh, Tadesse Negi and Zinaw Dilnesaw “Effect of Planting Density on Yield and Yield Components of Sugarcane at Wonji-Shoa” Scholarly Journal of Agricultural Science Vol. 4(12), pp. 583-586 December, 2014 A paper articles on sugarcane A textbook of Design of Machine Elements by M. F. Spotts, T.E.Shoup
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