Effect of mechanized farming and the use of hired labour on rice farming in Kura Town, Kano State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study looked at the impact of hired labour and mechanized farming on rice farming in Kura town; the samples for this study were fifty farmers who personally managed the cultivation of rice farming. For ploughing, threshing, and milling, the tasks were completed in fewer amounts of time, totalling 72.3, 37.1, and 58.9 hours per hectare, operations like threshing, harvesting, and ploughing have not yet been automated. The contributions of agricultural machinery were around 42%, 2%, and 65%, for ploughing, harvesting, and threshing respectively, small rice milling equipment handled the entire milling process. Farmers who were interviewed said that human effort will be needed for at least 20 to 30 working days to prepare the land. By using hand tractors, this period was considerably cut down to only 3-5 days, the amount of time needed for other tasks that machines substituted also decreased, as mechanical farming replaces human labor, the need for human labour will continue to shrink in the future. Before the introduction of machinery, hired labour was mostly needed for ploughing. While family labourers often performed light and simple tasks like planting, fertilizing, etc. Hired labour made up a much smaller portion of the transplanting, weeding, and harvesting processes, accounting for 22%, 17%, and 29%, respectively. The use of machines to perform agricultural work instead of manual tools not only reduced the amount of time spent working hard (drudgery) during rice cultivation but also decreased farming expenses and increased the farmer's revenue.