Rural South Asia has about 700 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom are agriculturists. There is a variety of agricultural production systems, techniques, and products in this region. This diversity arises from a number of factors such as the variety of climatic zones and soils in the region, topography, the different levels of investment per unit of land and labor, population density, government policies regarding price supports for crops, and so on.

The principal food crops are rice, wheat, coarse grains, and pulses. The first three provide most of the caloric supply. They are grown under quite different conditions, generally, and have somewhat different structure of draft power use. Tables 1, 2, and 3 show production and yields of rice, wheat and coarse grains respectively in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. All three crops are important in India and Nepal, while wheat predominates in Pakistan and rice in Bangladesh.

The use of draft animals is prevalent in all three areas of foodgrain production. But there has been considerable mechanization of wheat production, particularly in areas where high-yielding varieties are grown for urban markets. Irrigation powered by diesel and electric pumps is common in certain regions, as is the use of tractors, though the use of such devices is generally limited to the better-off segment of farmers. India is the fourth largest user of chemical fertilizers in the world on an aggregate basis, though not on a per-person basis.¹

Similarly, there has been some mechanization of rice cultivation. Coarse grains, which are principally grown for self-provision by poor farm households, rely almost exclusively on draft animal power.

Despite the increasing use of farm machines, the single most important energy input for agriculture and related rural activities, food for draft animals, has not yet become a part of national or international energy accounting.

Many studies have shown the great importance of draft animals to agriculture and rural transportation; indeed, this is evident even to a casual observer of rural Asia. Yet, the primary energy needs of draft animals and the constraints that animal energy or peak power availability might pose for agriculture are not yet a systematic part of energy accounting or energy policy making. In fact there are considerable uncertainties as to the numbers of draft animals, the total amount of draft power which they represent, the total amount of energy inputs which are required, and the total energy output which these animals provide to rural agriculture and transportation. As Lawrence and Pearson have observed:

A number of widely varying estimates of food intake per draft animal can be found in the literature. We have made a survey of the literature to come up with a plausible range to use for the purposes of this study. Such literature as does exist poses considerable problems for its use for deriving overall figures. For instance, one of the principal unknowns is the average weight of draft animals. Another set of unknowns relates to the distribution of weights of animals in various parts of South Asia. But, a considerable portion of the scientific literature on draft animals consists of measurements on a few tropical animals. The relation of the weight and feed requirements of this set of laboratory animals, such as the one at the Center for Tropical Veterinary Medicine in Scotland to the average draft animals is unknown. Thus, while there are many measurements of feed intake under laboratory conditions, their usefulness for deriving national and regional data is limited to providing a check on such field data as there are, and to helping determine the efficiency of draft animal work. (See Chapter 3.)

Makhijani and Poole cite a figure of 25 million Btu or about 26 Gigajoules per animal per year for food intake of draft animals in India.³ Parikh uses a figure of 3.8 million kilocalories or about 16 Gigajoules per year for draft animals in Bangladesh.⁴ Bangladeshi animals are, on average, probably smaller than those in most other parts of South Asia, however. The lower feed requirements in Bangladesh may also be due to a larger proportion of draft animals being cows, as compared to other South Asian countries.

Baldwin cites a considerably higher requirement of 2.5 to 3 kilograms per day of dry matter per 100 kilograms of live weight. For a 350 kilogram bullock, the lower figure of 2.5 kilograms per day amounts to about 3.1 tons per year. At 13 gigajoules per ton, we get an annual energy requirement of about 40 gigajoules per animal.⁵ This figure is approximately the same as that given by Thomas and Pearson for Brahman oxen.⁶ A.R. Rao has published a detailed analysis of the bioenergetics of bullocks used for draft power in Haryana, India. His estimate of the energy inputs to a bullock working an average number of days for a farm which uses only animal draft power (176 days) is about 30 gigajoules per year.⁷

Table 4 (below) shows estimates of the contributions of various sources of energy in South Asian countries. There is considerable uncertainty about energy intake per draft animal. We have used a range of 20 to 40 gigajoules per animal per year for feed requirements. Only direct food intake of draft animals is included in Table 4.

Table 4 shows that, even when all urban use of modern energy forms and cooking and heating applications of traditional energy are included, primary energy for draft animals is among the most important uses of energy.⁸ It constitutes at least 15% of all energy use if we take the lower estimates of intake per animal. If we use the higher figure of 40 gigajoules per animal per year, draft animals account for up to 35% of energy requirements.

Draft animals play an even larger role if we consider rural energy requirements. Table 5 (below) shows estimates of rural energy use in South Asia. The primary energy intake of draft animals is in the range of 25% to 60% of total rural energy use.

We must remember that Tables 4 and 5 show only the direct annual intake of draft animals which actually work on the fields. It does not include the intake of young animals and cows which must be maintained in order for a system of draft animals to exists. However, both draft animals and the other animals needed for the system provide other benefits, such as dung for manure or fuel, leather, and milk. A detailed discussion is given in Chapter 3.

Another revealing way of examining the importance of draft animals is to compare the energy intake of draft animals with the total use of modern energy in agriculture. Consider the data for India as an example. The total use of modern energy in India in 1986 was 6160 petajoules.⁹ Makhijani and Poole estimated that about 10% of modern energy use in India in the early 1970s was in rural areas, most of it for agriculture.¹⁰ Goldemberg, Johansson, Reddy and Williams estimate that about 9.1% of modern energy in India was used in agriculture.^11,12 Using the latter estimate of 9.1% for modern energy use in agriculture in India, we get a figure of about 560 petajoules, compared to about 1,800 to 3,600 petajoules for draft animals. Thus, draft animals consumed roughly three to six times as much primary energy as all commercial energy in agriculture in India.¹³ We shall see in Chapter 3 that when the feed requirements of the non-working young and the cows needed for reproduction are taken into account, inputs to the system of draft animals in India are five to eight times greater than modern energy inputs.

It is clear from the data that we have cited and analyzed that the energy intake of draft animals is of fundamental importance to rural life in South Asia (and a number of other parts of the Third World) and to agricultural production.

As is well known, actual energy intakes are not the only consideration. There are other very crucial aspects to the understanding of the role of draft animals, the needs for mechanical power, and the implications for agricultural and energy policy. They are:

1. Useful energy output: We must evaluate the efficiency of the use of draft animals in agriculture and compare this, when appropriate, to other means of obtaining draft energy as supplements, complements, or substitutes.

2. Useful energy requirements: The useful energy needs for agricultural operations are not met for a large numbers of poor peasants who do not possess sufficient numbers of draft animals or who cannot provide enough feed for the animals that they do have. This may be in part due to scarcity of available land, and/or fodder, reflected in high prices for both, out of reach of poor peasants.

3. Peak power requirements: Various agricultural operations have peak power requirements without which these operations cannot be done efficiently.

4. Peak labor requirements: Peak labor requirements may be reduced by the use of additional mechanical power in certain operations such as harvesting or threshing. On the other hand, intensification of cropping made possible by the use of additional mechanical power may increase overall labor requirements and, possibly, peak labor requirements. In other words, the question of mechanical power is closely linked with the question of rural employment.