Asian Journal of Home Science

Bijoylaxmi Bhuyan ¹, Mira Kalita ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Family Resource Management, College of Home Science, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat (Assam), IN

Abstract

In Assamese culture, many bi-products of rice are prepared with indigenous techniques and are under women's work domain. Preparations of these products are highly skillful and are labour intensive. These ready to eat nutritious products from modern 'health food' viewpoint are highly acceptable but quality is observed to be not always satisfactory. This could be due to paying of less attention to economic use of human factors and comfort in the work place. These aspects of work provide comfortable work condition and consequently promote health and efficiency of the worker that help to maintain quantity and quality of products. In this context, the study was undertaken to analyse human factors and physical factors in work place involved in processing of aforesaid products. Study revealed that 86 per cent of the workers complained of high to medium discomfort in the lumbo sacral region, which might be due to adoption of awkward postures. Rating perceived exertion of the workers was reported as 'high' indicating the work to be fatiguing, the reason might be low level of illumination in the kitchen, time consuming aspects/factors at work and need to attend to other household tasks simultaneously. In all, the physical conditions in the work place were found to be less conducive to workers. To improve human and physical factors for economic upliftment of rural women involved in self-help groups in Assam in particular, proper interventions could be planned.

Keywords

Rice, Indigenous Processing, Value Addition of Rice.

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Bijoylaxmi Bhuyan ¹, Leena Das ¹, Pallavi Talukdar ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Family Resource Management and Consumer Studies, College of Community Science, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat (Assam), IN

Abstract

A well structured interview schedule was administered on hundred rural households of eleven villages of Jorhat district of Assam during 2016-17 to conduct a survey specially on accumulation and utilization of agricultural wastes in rural households. Result indicated that majority of the farmers (30%) were of middle age group (30-40 years), mostly having a nuclear family (73%) with 1-5 members with an educational qualification upto 10^th standard. Majority of the respondents are marginal farmer with a land holding upto 10 acres and earn their livelihood primarily from farming. Most of the households cultivated paddy as monocrop. However, Rabi and Kharif vegetables were also grown by many households depending upon the land situation. Data reveals that 10,396 qt rice straw, 18,193 qt of rice husk, 2004.64 kg of water hyacinth and 12000 number of areca sheath are produced as agricultural wastes among the 100 households. The study also reveals that there is a huge gap between the availability of agricultural wastes and awareness for economic utilizing these wastes.

Keywords

Agricultural Wastes, Water Hyacinth, Rice Straw, Rice Husk.

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