Combine Harvester: Small Machine Solves Big Rice Harvesting Problem of Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh, a country with 87% of rural households that depend on agriculture and rice dominated diets (70%), engages the country’s food security. Therefore, there is strong advocacy for a mechanized paddy harvesting system for food security in South Asia, mainly Bangladesh. Some harvesting machinery is available; however, the precise roles of a combine harvester during this process are little. This study attempts to understand the consequences of combining harvesters for paddy harvesting and compare them with hand harvesting. For comparison of field performance of combine harvester with traditional harvesting, the experiment was conducted at Gazipur District, Bangladesh, in 2016. Results showed that the labor required for harvesting unit area 283, 15 and 9.87 man-h ∙ ha − 1 for T 1 (Sickle + Head carry + Beating + Kula ), T 2 (Reaper + Trolley carry + Close drum thresher + winnower), T 3 (Combine harvester) system, respectively. Likewise, the harvesting costs were 1.84 (T 2 ) and 2.5 (T 1 ) times higher than the combine harvester (T 3 ). Also, the postharvest loss can be saved 1.84%, to use combine harvester over manual harvesting of paddy. The above result revealed that the semi-mechanized and mechanized harvesting system is a time, labor and cost-saving system; however, the manual reaping system is concerned with more postharvest losses (3.09%). This study highlights the importance of combine harvester; however, further research is required in other places with large and mini-combine harvesters under diverse cropping areas and to test a combine harvester’s detailed potentiality.