Low-cost plough for poor farmers — Mohan Kumar makes affordable inventions

AD Mohan Kumar, a farmer who hails from the northern part of Kodagu district, Karnataka, has come up with an innovative plough equipped with machinery based on a 100 cc bike engine. His objective is to help farmers around him plough the fields with less hassle, and he wants to employ viable mechanisation to replace the shortage of manpower for the farmers.

Coming from a farming background, Mohan Kumar is a graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, and yet he chose not to take up a job. Having seen the struggles of farmers firsthand, he was always concerned about their problems and had a strong resolve to do something about them.

According to a report by The New Indian Express, five years ago, he started a welding shop in the town of Shanivarasanthe to make his bread and designed a machine for dressing chickens. This design gathered plenty of attention and demand from various parts of Karnataka. With this motivation, he continued to innovate and came up with the idea of designing a spraying machine that can be used in coffee, pepper, and areca. Soon, he went on to invent a firewood-breaking machine and a cardamom-drying machine.

He was always determined to cut down the costs of these machines so that financially backward farmers could afford them. Recently, he finished the design for a ploughing machine that consumes 850 ml to 1000 ml of petrol in an hour and runs solely on a 100 cc engine of a TVS 50 bike. The objective behind introducing this machine was to help poor farmers who can't afford tillers and tractors.

Speaking with The New Indian Express, he said,

A male labourer gets Rs 400-450 daily wage in the district and small and marginal farmers cannot afford to have bullocks and maintain them. The new machine costs Rs 30,000 and if the state government extends subsidy, it will be much useful.

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