Analytical Study of Isometric Muscular Strength of Agricultural workers: Indian Perspective

Abstract

In agriculture, hand tools and equipment are most commonly used for various farming operations. All these devices demand a range of muscle force. Agricultural workers’ muscular strength plays a significant andcrucialroleinperformingvariousagriculturaloperations. Incompatibilitybetweenoperators’physical capability (anthropometric and biomechanical) and physical task demands to operate tools/equipment, often leads to poor performance, low productivity and safety problems. Although anthropometric data are generally being considered, an inadvertent negligence of using strength database is very common for agricultural tools/equipment design. This is not an exception for Indian agricultural scenario. Therefore, in the present paper an attempt has been made to study available/reported strength data of Indian agricultural workers’ and to identify safe limit of operational muscular strength for operating various agricultural tools/equipment. Muscular strength data of Indian agricultural workers were collected/ gathered from different sources (electronic and hardcopy documents and databases) and statistically analyzed using SPSS 17.0 software package. Results showed statistically significant (p<0.01) differences in mean muscular strength variables between male and female workers from different region (states) of India. Further, comparison between pooled Indian data versus various regional (within India) data, revealed significant (p<0.01) difference in most of the muscular strength variables. Based on present study, an attempt was also made to illustrate safe limit of working force for agricultural operations with various tools and equipment (e.g. sickle, grubber, fertilizer broadcaster, wheel hoe, brake pedal, clutch pedal etc.) by wide range of population.