Analysis of traditional agricultural tools used by the farm women in Southern district of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

The rural farm women are involved in all agricultural activities for their livelihood. Most of the activities from sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and threshing, to winnowing and grading were performed by farm women. Both male and female farmers mostly prefer traditional farm tools to perform these agricultural activities such as harvesting, weeding, making ridges and furrows etc. They have more experience in handling of traditional tools than modern implements. The age of the farm women were ranged from less than 35 to more than 55 with the mean age of 43±11. With regard to the literacy level almost of 2/3 rd of the surveyed farm women were literate and 1/3 rd of them were illiterate. Analysis of the literacy level identified that majority of them were educated up to 8 th standard (44%). They had a work experience of less than 10 years to more than 35 years with the mean experience of 22 years in agricultural activities. Traditional tools such as sickle (Aruval), bamboo basket (moongil thattu), Spade (Mannvetti), Hand hoe (Kalaikothi), Hand rake (Mannkilari) were commonly used by the farm women. According to farm women suggestions conventional tools have to be modified/improved for their convenience, to improve their productivity and to enhance the income from the agricultural sector.