This is a very interesting issue and I would like to follow people's responses. Hoever, l think we need to look at minimising waste post-harvest more than really improving production.

The biggest challenges I see with reducing food waste are i) to match supply and demand and ii) optmising the supply chains/logistics networks. There are well established industrial engineering tools for solving these kinds of problems but the grand scale of the problem and disjointed coordination makes the application of the methods particularly challenging.

Productivity of agricultural product is the ratio between output of agricultural products and the input of resources used in the process of production. To increase production of Agricultural food products as an industrial engineer, the workstudy technique is recommended. Work study uses techniques like method study and work measurement to understand human work potential in terms of time spent on completing a task at the field, looking at ways to make the task simpler and easy, as to increase productivity and efficiency. Work study is used to finding ways of increasing on job performance, optimum usage of plant and agricultural machinery, standardization of work methods, etc....

Regards,

Modestus.

surely massive technology because we will need it if the population continues to increase

I agree with Liberty.

Dear Dr. Ashok,

Tools Used in Agriculture

Traditional trucks and tractors and the various implements they pull have saved countless hours of labor and will continue to do so. Now, however, the smaller, lighter versions have become affordable even for hobby farmers. Someone will always need a pruner or post-hole digger. And can you call yourself a farmer without a pitchfork, hay rake and hoe?

Heavy Equipment

This category holds the most extensive array of traditional agricultural equipment: tractors, manure spreaders, fertilizer and insecticide sprayers, plows, cultivators, harrows, planters, harvesters, balers, wagons and trucks weighing more than one ton, with six- to-18 wheels.

Larger concerns can't afford to farm without these big-ticket items, while smaller farms and ranches either band together to buy or lease tractors, trucks and the implements they pull. The tractor pulls the plow through each field in spring or fall, followed by the disc or harrow. Once the planter trails through the pasture, the wait begins. At the end of summer, the harvester takes grain and leaves the hay behind, or takes corn and leaves silage. After a few days of drying time, a baler turns all that chaff into round or square bales. Large trucks transport the entire harvest from field to packinghouse to store.

Light Equipment

Hobby farmers and homesteaders have a tractor-drawn or a walk-behind tiller at their disposal.With the right lawn tractor, a hobby farmer can plow everything from a kitchen garden to one of the long, narrow land parcels known as "bowling-alley" lots. Snowmobiles and 4-wheelers help ranchers and other livestock farmers haul feed and round up stock, run fencelines or harass predators.

Automation

Automated irrigation provides the linchpin of the agricultural world. Without irrigation, neither crops nor livestock maintenance creates any profit. Scrubbers, conveyors, sizing, sorting and packing equipment allow the farmers, ranchers, nursery and hatchery owners to maintain their supply chains, keeping cash in their own pockets instead of enriching intermediaries.

Source: https://bizfluent.com/list-6292400-tools-used-agriculture.html

I believe system analysis can play an impact in overall productivity of farmer's efforts. We need to consider small farmers as well who have smaller farms and depend on environmental and financial constraints plus who are largely affected by their sale in market. The inhibitors for these farmers who have potential to expand their horizons in the area of types of crops, affordable machinery and others need to be considered. System analysis will be able to provide various independent factors too which are ignored or are hidden while considering long term growth of the farmers.

Dear Modestus,

Thank you very much for sharing your expert views on Agriculture productivity and application of Industrial Engineering` techniques in Agriculture to improve productivity.I agree largely with your views.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Liberty

Thank you very much for highlighting agricultural products wastage issues post harvesting and how one need to focus on reducing the wastages by optimising Supply Chain / Logistic. This is very important to reduce wastages.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Eraldo,

Thank you very much for your views highlighting impact of mechanisation on Agricultue production processes and improving productivity. Your views are well appreciated.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Catia

Thank you very much for emphasising on need for development of technology to increase agriculture production.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Aung,

Thank you very much for highlighting application of various type of tools to enhance agriculture production and improve upon efficiency and productivity. Your points regarding automation of irrigation (this will help in saving water also), supply chain of products are very well appreciated.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Juliana,

Thank you very much for your contribution.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Reenu

Thank you for laying emphasis on systems anal and approach and also highlighting prper selection of type of crops and agriculture machineries.

All the best

Dear Dr. Ashok Pundir it is really an interesting issue.

Until recently, the choice of technologies available to farmers was largely determined by the need to increase production, profits and productivity. The main constraints were the availability of capital, knowledge of how to use the technology and market risks — risks that in many countries policies were shielded by government policies. In the past, “good policy practices” was therefore rather straightforward, relating primarily to increasing output and the aim of agricultural policies was to increase productivity in agriculture. Agricultural research and extension services could concentrate, for example, on improving the productivity of small farms. Now agriculture has to fulfil diverse objectives: it needs to be internationally competitive, produce agricultural products of high quality while meeting sustainability goals. In order to remain competitive, agricultural producers need rapid access to emerging technologies.

Farmers are faced with many more constraints — and also more opportunities. In addition to being profitable, they need to meet environmental standards and regulations, as well as deal with direct and indirect consumer and lobby group pressures. They may also be flooded with information from various government and industry sources, that make choosing appropriate technologies more difficult. Farmers also need to change their production and management practices in response to agricultural policies that include environmental conditions and I am confident that farmers have the capacity to do so. Uncertainty may increase even more in the future.

There may also be uncertainty related to the future policy environment, especially with respect to support, trade and pressures from the agro- 16 food sector. Adopting technologies by farmers is an investment. It takes time, however, for the rewards to flow and farmers may be reluctant to invest in an uncertain climate with more constraints, where some of the benefits are for society. Should it be the farmer or society that pays? Technological change has been the basis for increasing agricultural productivity and promoting agricultural development. Research affects the productivity of farming systems by generating new technologies which, if appropriate to farmers’ circumstances, will be rapidly adopted.

Historically, researchers and extension workers have been primarily responsible for identifying and injecting economic and environmental factors into the process of developing and introducing an agricultural innovation. This is typically characterised as a top-down process, whereby researchers develop the innovation, extension workers promote its use, and farmers either adopt or reject the innovation based on the features important to them.

Therefore, the following points may help a lot to boost agricultural productivity and sustainability.

Article Towards a new generation of agricultural system data, models...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128121603000027

https://www.oecd.org/greengrowth/sustainable-agriculture/2739771.pdf

http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/130919-TG07-Agriculture-Report-WEB.pdf

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/8-ways-africa-can-raise-farm-productivity-and-boost-growth/

Dear Beemnet,

Thank you very much for sharing a very enlightening and comprehensive response.Your suggestions regarding integration with Agriculture Value Chain and reform keeping in view productivity of agriculture is exemplary.

Regards

Ashok

well, i think in country like India, any machinery which cuts labour requirements is welcome.

For instance, take case of cotton in India.

We have largest area and production for this crop over the globe since last couple of years.Despite that no machinery is practically able to pick seed cotton from mature cotton plants.However most of developed countries are using machines to do so since last 3 decades despite limited area.

This will not onlt reduce drudgery but also improve quality greatly by timely picking and avoiding vagris of weather through rainfall and other issues.

I read your comments,

In my opinion, the best way to use mechanization is to native that machine or tool because most machines are designed and constructed for the constructive country, so we have to manipulate machines according to our geographical conditions.

Dear Dr Singh,

Thank you very much for your response emphasising use of machinery to reduce labour cost with example.

Regards

Ashok Pundir

I agree with Liberty, because to reduce waste and is of fundamental importance not only in the agricultural production but also for all other resources. Perhaps farms that produce fruit and vegetables (tomatoes, courgettes, melons, etc.) could increase their production by introducing bee breeding. It is well known that fruit and vegetable production increases considerably if bee hives are close to crops. The advantages would be multiple: an increase in production; honey production; elimination of insecticides (incompatible with the breeding of bees) with undoubted advantages for human and environmental health. But since the question is how to increase agricultural production to feed a growing population, it will be necessary to consider the balance between production increase due to bees and loss of product due to the non-use of insecticides.

Dear Hawre,

Thank you very much for your contribution emphasising adoption of mechanisation as per local requirements.

Regards

Ashok

Actually, it depends on many effective factors including types of agricultural products, soil properties, kind of irrigation, and so on.

Regards,

Emad

Dear Dr Leonardo,

Thank you very much for highlighting use of bee hives close to crops pertaining to fruits and vegetables to improve productivity. Also highlighted reduction in wastages of food products.

Regards

Ashok Pundir

Dear Emad,

Thank you very much for the contribution.

Regards

Ashok

The use of Information technology would greatly increase agricultural food products. It would greatly support selection of better crop, fertilizer, pesticide and so on. It would also improve land and water management, provide access to weather information, and connect farmers to source of credit facilities. This would also boost the supply chain network, making sourcing of raw materials easy at an affordable rate and distribution of useful materials is also done at an optimized rate. Networking is made easy and farmers can easily have access to information about crop prices in different markets. This has a way of boosting productivity.

Dear Modestus,

Thank you very much for highlighting role of Information Technology enabling better networking facilitating for increase in Agriculture production.

Regards

Ashok

Thank you very much A. Pundir.

Regards

Modestus

This question is interesting. To increase production, there must be optimal allocation of the available farm resources. This is where the knowledge of OR becomes very important. However, problem identification must proceed the use of any OR tool that will be applied to a particular production problem. This will enable industrial engineers to proffer solutions that are sustainable to agricultural production problems.

However, there is a likelihood that the solution to a problem in Location A may be different from that of Location B. This implies that each location must use their data sets during the implementation of any OR tool. In addition, it will make more sense when this problem is considered as a demand cum supply problem. This is because an increase in production without a responding increase in demand will result in waste and loss of resources on the part of farmers. This may not be an issue in developed countries, but developing countries will definitely suffer from this problem.

Dear Desmond,

Thank you very much for sharing your views regarding application of OR in planning and optimising Agriculture production. Thank you for excellent contribution.

Regards

Ashok

Dear Prof. Ashok,

I would like to share:

Solutions for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems

TECHNICAL REPORT FOR THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA

Source: http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/130919-TG07-Agriculture-Report-WEB.pdf

Dear Aung,

Thank you very much for sharing an excellent Report. This report provides lot of content and clarity and will be useful for our RG Colleagues.

Regards

Ashok

I agree to all answers till now. We all know that for meeting the need of food for population we need to minimize the food wastage because availability of the resources are also decreasing with time and change in climate. For developing countries food wastage mostly occurs in storage and transportation that we call as a logistics it happens because non awareness of suitable logistics tools and non availability of proper storage and transportation techniques and facilities. The tools that should be used in logistics are softwares for management and online storage of stock datas like Netsuite, RAMCO etc, time and temperature sensors, RFID tools for continuous information of vehicle's temperature during transportation, JIT approach for aligning production or delivery with demand that also helps in avoiding out of stock condition, suitable vehicle and route scheduling tools etc. As far as manufacturing is concerned loss of food occurs in manufacturing industry also. For controlling the loss of food in manufacturing or processing of food there are many tools and techniques e.g. SPC, Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), kaizen, kanban, TPM, Takt time, SMED, heijunka, VSM, FMEA, Pareto Chart, Control chart, check sheet, cause and effect diagram. for reduction of food loss maintence of quality from farm to fork is very necessary by the use of advanced technology and tools, including suppliers, growers, retailers and producers all under one umbrella.

Dear Kirti,

Thank you for excellent and elaborate response highlighting food wastages in transportation and storage. The tools and techniques mentioned for controlling wastage of food during processing are really useful.

All the best

Ashok Pundir

To reduce wastage of food during harvesting, transportation and storage, what steps need to be taken ?

How can supply Chain help in reducing wastages?

@ A. Pundir, wastage of food (perishable products in most cases) during/after harvesting can be controlled by ensuring effective delivery which is possible with effective planning of the supply chain network architecture to ensure timely shipment of products to the right place at the right time at a reduced rate.

Note that when perishable products arrive at the right factory at the right time wastage is reduced as the products would be converted into useful form without delay while some would be properly stored for future use.

Dear Modestus,

Thank you very much for your excellent contribution.

Regards

Ashok

Hi Ashok,

Agricultural production involves numerous processes. Therefore, I'd say both various forms of process improvement (e.g., maturity modeling) as well as considerations of quality (management, control, and assurance).

Have a great day!

--Adrian

Thank you prof. for giving us the opportunity to express our views via your interesting question. Many thanks to all RG scholars for your wonderful contributions.

Regards,

Modestus.

Dear Daniel,

Thank you very much for your excellent views.

Regards

Ashok Pundir