Tractive performance of draught animals in mountain farming systems: A study of central Himalaya, India

Abstract

This paper examines tractive performance of draught animals in 4 agro-ecological zones (the Shivaliks or foothills, the Middle Himalaya under traditional agriculture. the Middle Himalaya under transformed agriculture, and the Greater Himalaya) representing different farming systems in the Indian Central Himalayan mountains. Tractive effort by bullocks, in terms of body weight ranges from 9% during weeding-earthing-up operations to 19% during puddling operations at speeds of 2.6 to 1.6 km / hour. Tractive effort during ploughing is about 16% of animal's body weight at a speed of 2.4 km / hour. These high values are indicative of the special ability of the light weight and hardy native draught animals to generate a greater percentage of body weight as tractive effort. A pair of bullocks. on an average, ploughs and levels 1100 squarc metres I day during 8 hours' work. Taking draught power developed during ploughing as a standard, / animal (average weight 250 kg) draught power output comes to 0.26 kW (0.35 hp). Transformed Middle mountain agriculture requires maximum bullock and human hr and energy (11,696 hr and 1,419 kWh) / ha / year, followed by hill agriculture (10,807 hr' and 1,419 kWh). While traditional middle mountain agriculture uses more energy/ha area (592 kWh) than high mountain agriculture (533 kWh), the former requires less work hr (3,917) than the latter (4,685). Bullocks work for only 59 days a year in the high mountains, but in the transformed middle mountains they are used for as many as 236 days a year. of the total animate energy, high mountain agriculture uses only 41 % DAP, hill agriculture about 52%, transformed agriculture about 54%, and traditional agriculture as much as 62% DAP for crop cultivation.