A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1995

This study is based on a study of 100 farmers from 2 different districts in Takeo province, Cambodia. This was conducted through personal interviews of the farmers from January , 1995 to May, 1995. The aim of the study was to study the present status of agricultural mechanization in Takeo province and compare the yields, labour use and cropping intensity on rainfed and irrigated farm plots of different groups of farmers in the survey areas. The farm plots were categorized as i) rainfed only, ii) irrigated with traditional farm tools, and iii) irrigated with pump. The farmers were classified into three groups, according to their power sources as below i) small scale farmers , who have only hand tools, ii) medium scale farmers, who have draft animals and hand tools, iii) large scale farmers, who have hand tools, draft animal, and use tractor for some operations. The present status of agricultural mechanization in Takeo province is still conventional. Human labour and animal power is the major sources of this region. Pumps and threshers are being used in Takeo province, especially in the south of this province. The farm size of paddy fields are still small, being less than 0.5 ha per plot for irrigated field. Tractors are used mainly for land preparation and transportation. It was found that the yields of paddy per hectare were higher in irrigated fields than in the rainfed fields. The yields of pump irrigated fields were higher than the traditional farm tools irrigated fields. Labour use was higher for irrigated fields compared to rainfed fields. The average family earnings on three categories systems by scale were found that large scale farmers were higher than the other farm scales, was due to they have large farm and get higher income from other non-farm income.