Agricultural Machinery Operational Cost: in Bangladesh

The purpose of the study was to select minimum cost inputs and selection of economic set of machines and implements for tilling to threshing operations in Boro rice cultivation. Operating costs were calculated and financial profitability was determined by two major on farm financial measurement techniques namely, Gross margin and Net margin, and Break-even analysis. Considering the minimum cost, operating cost and capacity of alternatives for each operation, size of annual operational farm holdings and farmers access to the machines, a procedure was developed to select the minimum cost inputs and select an economic set of machines for each farm holdings. BRRI dhan 29, Tractor, DTW, Drum seeder, Japanese Rice Weeder, Leaf Color Chart (LCC) technique, BAUzia fertilizer distributor, Knapsack Sprayer, Reaper and Closed drum power thresher were found suitable for seed, tilling, irrigation, seeding, weeding, fertilizer application techniques, fertilizer distributing, spraying, harvesting and threshing, respectively. A computer simulation model was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 language for easy computation and selection of minimum cost inputs and economic set of machines.