Trading
Tools
Competitive
pricing of farm machinery, rapidly deliverable spare parts and on-site
advisors are important market indices to consider while tapping the
overseas markets,
says Dr G Singh
Innovative
and practical farm machinery facilitates management of agricultural
inputs, ensures timeliness in farm operations, reduces drudgery in
farm operations and improves quality of farm produce. Till date draught
animals continue to provide major tractive power in India for field
operations due to the presence of small land holdings and hill agriculture,
but the use of mechanized equipment has also increased considerably.
As the financial incentives provided by the Government to the farmers
has increased the use of mechanically operated irrigation pumps, animal
and tractor operated cultivators and disc harrows for seed bed preparation,
seed drill or seed-cum-fertiliser drills, planters for line sowing
with fertiliser application, mechanical power threshers and combine
harvesters have also increased.
Even
those farmers who cannot afford to own farm machineries are utilising
them through rental facilities. It is estimated that more than 17
million irrigation pumps and 2.26 million tractors are in use in the
country. The details are given in Tables 1 to 2.
Export
of agricultural machinery
The
export of agricultural machinery and tractors in the world was to
the tune of $27,688 million in the year 2000 of which the share of
agricultural machinery was 69.6 per cent. US led the export of agricultural
tractors and machinery ($4917 million with 73.7 per cent of agricultural
machinery) followed by the United Kingdom ($3544 million with 55.6
per cent of agricultural machinery) and Italy ($3256 million with
68.2 per cent of agricultural machinery). Among the Asian countries,
the developed countries had a share of 7.2 per cent of the world market
while the developing countries had only 2.8 per cent. Japan had been
consistently the leading Asian country exporting machinery worth $1936
million.
Today
India is recognised as a world leader in the development and manufacture
of animal operated equipment. As per the classifications of the Ministry
of Commerce, Government of India, about 50 major agricultural machinery
commodities (including spare parts) are exported to different countries.
The value of exports of tractors and agricultural machinery by India
had reached $67.278 million by the year 2000 of which the share of
agricultural machinery was 65.3 per cent. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri
Lanka are the major Asian countries importing the items while Japan,
South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand are
the other countries. The US has been importing tractors, tractor plough
and other items like scrapers, submersible pumps, harvesting and threshing
equipment, hand tools, mowers and milking machines.
United
Kingdom has also been importing items like mowers, pickers for cotton
and jute machinery, hand tools, parts of dairy machinery and bulldozers.
As for other European countries, Italy imports machinery like pickers
for cotton machinery and jute machinery and Germany sources graders
and levelers, seeders and planters, cleaning machinery, and mowers
and pickers for jute machinery from India. France imports submersible
pumps and pickers for cotton and jute machinery, Romania imports the
mower and Netherlands takes pickers for cotton machinery. Spain also
imports pickers for cotton and jute machinery. India’s hand tools
and dairy machinery are exported to Switzerland and Sweden respectively.
Other
countries like Canada import sorting machines, scrapers and milking
machines and Australia sources disc harrows, hedges and pruning shears
and machines for production of soya milk. It is thus evident that
the Indian agricultural machinery is being imported by a number of
countries around the world for different purposes.
contd...
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