Abstract
Agriculture has been considered as the basic source of income and livelihood for majority of Indian families. In the agricultural fields, the farmers use various types of tools and equipment to carry out their day-today activities. Ergonomically designed tools and equipment provide promising and encouraging results and hence it becomes necessary to consider the human factors in the design of farm tools to enhance the operating efficiencies, productivity, and working comforts of the farmers. In view of this, an effort has been made to assess the ergonomics involved in various postures taken by farmers in different rice farming processes like land preparation, seeding, weeding, fertilizing, pesticide spraying, harvesting, threshing, and winnowing, respectively. The postures taken by farmers during all these processes were collected by still photography considering both manual and mechanized methods, wherever applicable in Odisha (India). The Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) tool was used to assess the postures, and based on the obtained RULA scores the necessary actions were recommended accordingly. Then, SWOT analysis was done for evaluating the modified technique in farming over the existing system.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bhatt SH (2005) A study on technological gaps and constraints in cultivation of rice in Jammu and Kashmir. Ph.D. (Ag.). Thesis, JNKVV, Jabalpur
Bhattacharyya N, Chakrabarti D (2012) Ergonomic basket design to reduce cumulative trauma disorders in tea leaf plucking operation. Work 41:1234–1238
Cakmak B, Saracoglu T, Alayunt FN, Ozarslan C (2011) Vibration and noise characteristics of flap type olive harvesters. Appl Ergon 42:397–402
Chaturvedi V, Kumar A, Singh JK (2012) Power tiller: vibration magnitudes and intervention development for vibration reduction. Appl Ergon 43:891–901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2011.12.012
Dixit J, Khan JN (2011) Comparative field evaluation of self-propelled paddy transplanter with hand transplanting in valley lands of Kashmir region. Agric Mech Asia Afr Lat Am 42(2):14–18
Dooley WK (2012) Ergonomics and the development of agricultural vehicles. In: Agricultural equipment technology conference
Dube B, Mishra D, Satapathy S, Singh S (2018) Ergonomic evaluation of seeding, fertilizing and weeding postures in agricultural field. Int J Pure Appl Math 119(10 Special Issue B):1875–1880
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (1990) Agricultural engineering in development: selection of mechanization inputs. FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin. 84, FAO, Rome
Gite LP, Yadav BG (1990) Optimum handle height for a push pull type manually operated dryland weeder. Ergonomics 33(12):1487–1494
Jaganathan D, Padrnanabhan VB, Bhaskaran C, Chandru A, Lenin V (2009) Attitude of vegetable growers towards organic farming practices. Indian J Ext Educ 45(3 & 4):63–67
Jatinder KJ, Rana A (2012) Ergonomic interventions in weeding operations for drudgery reduction of hill farm women of India. Work 41:4349–4355
Kadam RG, Dhande KG (2016) Performance evaluation of power operated paddy winnower. Int J Agric Eng 9(1):47–52
Karandikar VN, Sane SM (2014) Application of Job Difficulty Index© to compare work severity using P-SVR© method of Ergonomic analysis. Int J Curr Eng Technol 4(1):417–422
Karthikeyan C, Veeraragavathatham D, Karpagam D, Ayisha FS (2009) Traditional tools in agricultural practices. Indian J Tradit Knowl 8(2):212–217
Khogare DT, Borkar S (2012) Development and evaluation of scale for measurement of postural discomfort and satisfaction of agriculture workers after weeding operation. Indian Streams Res J 2(6):43–46
Kwatra S, Deepa V, Sharma S (2010) A Comparative study on manual beating of paddy and manually operated paddy thresher on farm women. J Hum Ecol 32(3):183–187
Manjunatha MV, Reddy BGM, Shashidhar SD, Joshi VR (2009) Studies on the performance of self-propelled rice transplanter and its effect on crop yield. Karnataka J Agric Sci 22(2):385–387
McAtamney L, Corlett EN (1993) RULA: a survey method for the investigation of work related upper limb disorders. Appl Ergon 24(2):91–99
Naeini HS, Karuppiah K, Tamrin SB, Dalal K (2014) Ergonomics in agriculture: an approach in prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). J Agric Environ Sci 3:33–51
Nag PK, Dutt P (1979) Effectiveness of some simple agricultural weeders with reference to physiological responses. J Hum Ergol 8:13–21
Nath BC, Nam Y-S, Huda MdD, Rahman MdM, Ali P, Paul S (2017) Status and constrain for mechanization of rice harvesting system in Bangladesh. Agric Sci 8:492–506. https://doi.org/10.4236/as.2017.86037
Nunes IL (2009) FAST ERGO_X—a tool for ergonomic auditing and work-related musculoskeletal disorders prevention. Work 34(2):133–148
Possebom G, Santos Alonço AS, Bellochio SDC, Lopes TG, Carpes DP, Becker RS, Moreira AR, Francetto TR, Rossato FP, Ruiz Zart BCC (2018) Comparison of methods for postural assessment in the operation of agricultural machinery. J Agric Sci. https://doi.org/10.5539/jas.v10n9p252
Ren J, Xiao D (2009) Ergonomic simulation and evaluation of elliptical trainer with CATIA V5. CADDM 19(1):81–86
Sanjog J, Karmakar H, Agarwal C, Patil D (2012) Designing and ergonomic evaluation of a shoe-rack in CAD environment. Int J Comput Appl 49(20):38–41
Singh PK, Varshney JG (2010) Adoption level and constraints in rice production technology. Indian Res J Ext Educ 10(1):91–94
Singh SRK, Gautam US, Shukla SK, Singh DK, Pandey SK (2010) improved rice production technologies in Uttarakhand Hills: inquisitiveness, reversion, adoption and constraints. Indian J Ext Educ 46(1&2):127–131
Tiwari D, Kaur M, Dhaliwal RK (2010) Constraints faced by the practicing farmers in adoption of zero tillage technology in Punjab. Indian J Ext Educ 46(1&2):101–105
Villarejo D, Baron SL (1999) Occupational health status of hired farm workers. Occup Med 14:613–635
Vyavahare RT, Kallurkar SP (2012) Anthropometric and strength data of Indian agricultural workers for equipment design: a review. Agric Eng Int CIGR J 14(4):102–114
Yazdanirad S, Khoshakhiagh AH, Habibi E, Zare A, Zeinodini M, Dehghani F (2018) Comparing the effectiveness of three ergonomic risk assessment methods-RULA, LUBA, and NEPRA-to predict the upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders. Indian J Occup Environ Med 22:17–21
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Figures a, b, c, d, e, f, g, and h illustrate the RULA Tools used for various human body parts using “ErgoFellow 3.0”.
Figure i illustrates the sample RULA score obtained for Fig. 1 using “ErgoFellow 3.0”.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mishra, D., Satapathy, S. Ergonomic risk assessment of farmers in Odisha (India). Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 10, 1121–1132 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-019-00842-5
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-019-00842-5