Facing farmhand shortage, farmers increasingly turn to threshers for paddy

A shortage of workers and rising wages have led farmers in Kapilvastu to increasingly use thresher machines to process paddy.

With farmhands hard to find at harvest and transport time, and traditional threshing requiring far more time and money, farmers have been drawn toward machines. Farmers across all 10 local levels of the district have begun running such machines to separate paddy from straw.

Prabhu Dhobi, a farmer from Kapilvastu Municipality-6, Thumhawa, says it has become difficult to find workers in the village, and even when available, wages are expensive. He says he now relies on machines because they finish the work faster and also cut costs.

According to Binod Bhuja, a farmer from Maharajgunj Municipality-2, Padariya, with both oxen and laborers in short supply, a small thresher is easy to carry to the field and operate. He also points out the convenience of being able to run the machine at any time, morning, afternoon or evening.