Agriculture Mechanization – An Overview

(8) It Leads to Commercial Agriculture:
Mechanisation results in a shift from ‘subsistence farming’ to ‘commercial agriculture. This shift occurs
mainly due to the need for more land and capital to be associated with farmer in order to reap the full
technological benefits.
This in its turn gives rise two tendencies:
(i) Gradual replacement of domestic or family by commercial methods, and
(ii) Search for international markets for agricultural produce.
(9) It Solves the Problem of Labour Shortage:
In countries where human labour falls short of requirements in agriculture, use of machines can replace
human and animal power.
(10) It Releases Manpower for Non-Agricultural Purposes:
Since the mechanisation of agriculture results in the employment of lesser number of persons on farms,
surplus manpower may be available for other economic activities.
(11) It Results in Better Use of Land:
Mechanisation also results in better utilization of agricultural land for “the substitution of gasoline
tractor for animal power means reduced demand. The use of machine energy, therefore, leads to good
agricultural production, to trade many crops or saleable animal products in short, to an exchange
economy and a system of land utilization in which cultivator rests on a different and infinitely more
complex basis than is found in the local self-sufficient economy.”
(12) It Increases Farm Income:
With the introduction of mechanisation the farm income as well as the individual income goes up. E. G.
Nourse writes, “It accounts for the unparalleled rise of national income and with it the standard of living,
it builds cities, it raises an ever loftier superstructure of financial, commercial and other cultural
institutions; it turns loose economic agglomerates into social economies to closely knit by a thousand
lines of interdependence. It creates much of the capital surplus on which modern economic progress is
largely based. It constitutes, the lion’s share to the public funds which support education, health and law
and order. In short, not only do machine industry, and mechanisation and science render agriculture
efficient, they create the very world in which this efficient agriculture can sell its bountiful crops.”
(13) It Reduces Fodder Area and Enlarges Food Area:
“With the introduction of mechanisation in agriculture the surplus animal power would be reduced so
that large areas of land required for producing fodder for it can be utilised for producing food for human
consumption. The remaining cattle population would be better attended to and better fed under