Manipur farmer awarded for producing tractor operated taro harvester
Yanglem Brajamania said that it took about 4 to 5 years to develop the final shape of the taro harvester machine
Manipur farmer Yanglem Brajamani Singh was honoured with the national innovation award in the 11th National Biennial Grassroots Innovation awards 2023 for his tractor operated taro harvester with washer machine.
The national innovation awards which were instituted by the union ministry of science & technology were presented to ‘Grassroot innovators’.
The union minister of state (Independent charge) of science and technology Dr Jitendra Singh handed over the award to innovative farmer during a 3-day festival of innovation and entrepreneurship held at Rashtrapati Bhavan in the national Capital from April 10-13, 2023.
After receiving the award, Yanglem Brajamania, a resident of Keinou Phiral Makhong village in Manipur’s Bishnupur district speaking to HT on phone said that it took about 4 to 5 years to develop the final shape of the taro harvester machine.
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“Being from a farming family, I’ve been struggling a lot to find an easy way for harvesting taro in our agricultural land as taro harvesting is done using a spade and it takes for days for harvest and we end up spending a lot of money on the wages of the labourers,” Brajamani said.
“I’ve also tried other machines produced from outside the state. But it was not suitable for our fields.”
“Since then, I’ve started to work on developing this machine and finally it comes to its existing shape,” he added.
The taro harvester is a tractor mounted implement driven by PTO (Power Take Off).
During the operation, the soil is dug up by a steel blade digger and corms of taro are released backwards by the continuous movement of the conveyer.
Using this implement, a farmer can harvest one hectare in 10 hours engaging three manpower including tractor driver while it takes over a week to harvest the same area by employing five labourers.
The washer is a cylindrically shaped body attached to the tractor after harvesting to wash and clean the yam.
The machine has reduced drudgery significantly as compared with manual taro harvesting and washing operations as squatting and bending positions are required during manual harvesting.
