Continuing from where I left off about my friend in the hinterland farming for rice, here is how he transplants seedlings now.
My friend Babu has sent the image to assuage the concerns that Tammy had expressed in her comments on the previous post.
Despite having received some negative reactions about women workforce harvesting rice in my previous post, before this machine came around, this is how rice seedlings were transplanted.
While I will be addressing the concerns about women workforce in my response to comments in my previous post, I can assure my readers that it is now increasingly difficult to get agricultural labour for intense operations like these as more lucrative opportunities are available for them in other non agriculture and urban/semi-urban sectors here.
Labour intensive operations were necessary when machines were not available and now that they are, manual labour is increasingly getting replaced by mechanical operations.
Part of the process of ‘development’ I guess.
The purpose of my writing about these matters is not to highlight the changes that are taking place, but to record my respect and admiration for my friend who has remained steadfast in being a farmer when he could have easily found other alternatives. People like him are the salt of this earth and deserve appreciation from all quarters.
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