Karimnagar (Andhra Pradesh): With the bumper paddy crop and prevailing unseasonal conditions of sudden rains and hailstorms in the district, farmers are being forced to resort to distressed harvesting of their crop with the harvesters by shelling out huge amount.
Taking advantage of the situation, the harvesters are charging heavily and making a fast buck in Karimnagar district, where the paddy crop is expected to be around 13.5 lakh metric tonnes during this rabi season.
Gone are the days when the harvesters charged Rs 1,000 for operating their machine for one hour in the fields. Now, they are charging Rs 1500 to Rs 2,000 per hour.
In Karimnagar district, more than 650 harvesters were being operated during this rabi season and doing roaring business. With the non-availability of farm labourers and heavy labour charges and time consuming process, the farmers also preferred the use of harvesters to harvest their paddy within hours.
A harvester could reap the paddy crop of one acre within one hour. Whereas, the deployment of four farm labourers at a cost of Rs 300 per head would take at least one whole day to harvest the paddy crop in one acre land.
"The mechanized harvesting is much easier than the manual time consuming one. With the help of harvesters, the harvested paddy is directly loaded into the tractors easily and taken to the fields for selling or store at the home", said Manohar Reddy a farmer in Alugunur village on the outskirts of the town. He said that the use of harvesters was cheaper when compared to deployment of farm labourers.