Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh
Smallholder farmers provide the foundation for food security in South Asia. However, increasing seasonal labor scarcity caused by rural out-migration has resulted in growing agricultural labor costs, presenting challenges to cash-constrained smallholder farmers that hire manual labor for land prepar...
| Autores principales: | , , , |
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| Formato: | Journal Article |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
Elsevier
2020
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/171321 |
| _version_ | 1855513289505636352 |
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| author | Gregg, Ellerbe Somers Colton, Jonathan Matin, Md Abdul Krupnik, Timothy J. |
| author_browse | Colton, Jonathan Gregg, Ellerbe Somers Krupnik, Timothy J. Matin, Md Abdul |
| author_facet | Gregg, Ellerbe Somers Colton, Jonathan Matin, Md Abdul Krupnik, Timothy J. |
| author_sort | Gregg, Ellerbe Somers |
| collection | Repository of Agricultural Research Outputs (CGSpace) |
| description | Smallholder farmers provide the foundation for food security in South Asia. However, increasing seasonal labor scarcity caused by rural out-migration has resulted in growing agricultural labor costs, presenting challenges to cash-constrained smallholder farmers that hire manual labor for land preparation, sowing, harvest and post-harvest operations. Technological innovations in small-scale agricultural machinery appropriate for the small field sizes and limited resource endowments of South Asia's farmers have been proposed as a potential solution to this problem. An increasing number of development initiatives also promote rural entrepreneurial approaches to mechanization, whereby smallholder farmers can access and use machinery in their own fields on an affordable fee-for-service basis offered by machinery owners. This approach reduces capital constraints for smallholder farmers while enabling entrepreneurs who can afford equipment to enter into business serving stallholder farmers as clients. This approach is now widely practiced in Bangladesh, where machinery entrepreneurs play a crucial role in providing access to productive technologies for smallholder farmers who could not otherwise afford direct purchase of labor- and cost-saving machinery. In order to maintain low machinery purchase costs for emerging yet capital constrained rural entrepreneurs, while also assuring high quality standards, cost-effective domestic production of agricultural machinery is increasingly championed as an important long-term national development objective. With no safety standards or guidelines for best production practices, the few manufacturing workshops that exist within Bangladesh operate inefficiently and without clear rationalization of manufacturing processes. Haphazard copying of prototypes or imported available machinery is common. This leads to inefficient production and poor product quality in an emerging but potentially highly beneficial industry. This paper addresses these problems and presents a case study to increase machinery manufacturers' capacity while improving manufacturing operations and workplace safety through equipment selection, workshop layout, and usability. |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | CGSpace171321 |
| institution | CGIAR Consortium |
| language | Inglés |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publishDateRange | 2020 |
| publishDateSort | 2020 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| publisherStr | Elsevier |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | CGSpace1713212025-02-19T14:35:59Z Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh Gregg, Ellerbe Somers Colton, Jonathan Matin, Md Abdul Krupnik, Timothy J. smallholders farmers food security agriculture equipment technology farm equipment fabrication participatory action research tractors Smallholder farmers provide the foundation for food security in South Asia. However, increasing seasonal labor scarcity caused by rural out-migration has resulted in growing agricultural labor costs, presenting challenges to cash-constrained smallholder farmers that hire manual labor for land preparation, sowing, harvest and post-harvest operations. Technological innovations in small-scale agricultural machinery appropriate for the small field sizes and limited resource endowments of South Asia's farmers have been proposed as a potential solution to this problem. An increasing number of development initiatives also promote rural entrepreneurial approaches to mechanization, whereby smallholder farmers can access and use machinery in their own fields on an affordable fee-for-service basis offered by machinery owners. This approach reduces capital constraints for smallholder farmers while enabling entrepreneurs who can afford equipment to enter into business serving stallholder farmers as clients. This approach is now widely practiced in Bangladesh, where machinery entrepreneurs play a crucial role in providing access to productive technologies for smallholder farmers who could not otherwise afford direct purchase of labor- and cost-saving machinery. In order to maintain low machinery purchase costs for emerging yet capital constrained rural entrepreneurs, while also assuring high quality standards, cost-effective domestic production of agricultural machinery is increasingly championed as an important long-term national development objective. With no safety standards or guidelines for best production practices, the few manufacturing workshops that exist within Bangladesh operate inefficiently and without clear rationalization of manufacturing processes. Haphazard copying of prototypes or imported available machinery is common. This leads to inefficient production and poor product quality in an emerging but potentially highly beneficial industry. This paper addresses these problems and presents a case study to increase machinery manufacturers' capacity while improving manufacturing operations and workplace safety through equipment selection, workshop layout, and usability. 2020 2025-01-29T12:58:00Z 2025-01-29T12:58:00Z Journal Article https://hdl.handle.net/10568/171321 en Open Access Elsevier Gregg, Ellerbe Somers; Colton, Jonathan; Matin, Md Abdul; and Krupnik, Timothy J. 2020. Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh. Development Engineering 5: 100046. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.deveng.2019.100046 |
| spellingShingle | smallholders farmers food security agriculture equipment technology farm equipment fabrication participatory action research tractors Gregg, Ellerbe Somers Colton, Jonathan Matin, Md Abdul Krupnik, Timothy J. Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh |
| title | Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh |
| title_full | Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh |
| title_fullStr | Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh |
| title_full_unstemmed | Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh |
| title_short | Efficient and participatory design of scale-appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries: A case study in Bangladesh |
| title_sort | efficient and participatory design of scale appropriate agricultural machinery workshops in developing countries a case study in bangladesh |
| topic | smallholders farmers food security agriculture equipment technology farm equipment fabrication participatory action research tractors |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/171321 |
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