India Combine Harvester Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

The usage of combine harvester was limited, due to the availability of ample labor, low labor costs, and high cost of machines, earlier. However, with rural work programs, such as MGNREGA, the scenario of combine harvesters in India changed. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) goes beyond providing a social safety net toward guaranteeing the right to employment. With the declining labor supply, increasing labor costs, it has become more cost-effective for Indian farmers to hire a combine harvester for cutting and thrashing purposes.

Self-propelled combine harvesters hold the largest market share, with regard to segmentation by type of harvester. Self-propelled combine harvesters have the highest efficiency when it comes to area harvested, per hour. However, self-propelled combine harvesters are priced higher, and with farmers depending heavily on custom hiring business to improve capacity utilization, the need for ensuring business clientele (smaller farmers) before the harvest season, becomes essential. Self-propelled combine harvesters are often transported from early harvest areas, such as Punjab and Haryana, to other areas of the country, such as Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, where the harvests take place later in the season. In 2016, around 5,910 units of combine harvesters were sold in the country.