ASRB NET — Farm Machinery & Power / Land & Water Management Engineering / Agricultural Structures & Process Engineering · India · Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ICAR)
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersChoosing, sizing, costing and replacing machines, and running a custom hiring centre that pays.
In the exams: GATE AG Sections 2 and 3 (machinery cost in 5 of 8 papers 2019–26); ICAR AIEEA-PG Unit V; NCEES PE (ASAE D497/EP496 supplied); PRC ABE machinery management
State PSC Assistant Agriculture Engineer and ASRB NET
Custom hiring centres and mechanisation schemes, cost-of-operation arithmetic, and machinery selection for local cropping systems.
How our questions for ASRB NET spread across the units of Farm Machinery Management & Economics. Difficulty: 2 easy, 21 medium, 14 hard.
| Replacement decisions | 6 | |
| Machinery selection and sizing | 5 | |
| Custom hiring centre economics | 5 | |
| Field efficiency and timeliness | 4 | |
| Mechanisation policy and subsidies | 4 | |
| Depreciation methods: straight line, declining balance, sum-of-years digits | 3 | |
| Break-even use and custom-hire comparison | 3 | |
| Theoretical and effective field capacity | 2 | |
| Fixed costs: depreciation, interest, taxes, insurance and housing | 2 | |
| Tractor-implement matching | 2 | |
| Variable costs: repair and maintenance, fuel and labour | 1 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
For the same machine and operator, why is field efficiency usually higher in a long rectangular field than in a short, irregular plot?
B. Headland turning time is a smaller share of total time in long fields
Turning time per turn is roughly fixed; a long field needs fewer turns per hectare, so productive time is a larger share. Draft, overlap and refilling needs do not depend on field length in this way.
A rotavator-tractor set burns 14 L/h of diesel at 90 per litre and covers 0.7 ha/h effectively. What is the fuel cost per hectare?
C. 1,800/ha
Fuel per hectare = 14 / 0.7 = 20 L; cost = 20 × 90 = 1,800 per hectare. Multiplying by capacity gives 882; 1,260 is cost per hour, not per hectare.
If the custom-hire rate for an operation rises while the owner's costs stay the same, the break-even use for ownership:
B. Falls to a smaller area
x* = FC/(R − VC). A larger R increases the denominator and lowers x*. It never reaches zero while FC > 0. So ownership pays at a smaller area than before.
An old combine is cheap to own but breaks down for several days in most harvests, causing shattering losses. In a replacement analysis, these losses should be:
A. Added to the old machine's cost of keeping it another year
Downtime in the critical window causes a timeliness loss that is a direct consequence of keeping the old machine, so it belongs in its marginal cost. Leaving it out biases the decision toward keeping unreliable machines.
As a machine ages, how do its annual depreciation and annual repair cost usually change?
B. Depreciation falls and repair cost rises, so average cost is U-shaped
Market value drops most in the early years and repairs grow with accumulated wear. Their sum averaged over years owned is U-shaped, with the minimum at the economic life.
Two identical tractors are bought on different farms; one works 1,200 h a year and the other 400 h. Other things equal, the economic life in years of the heavily used tractor is likely to be:
D. Shorter, because hours and repair costs accumulate faster
Repair cost is a function of accumulated hours; at three times the use, the rising part of the cost curve is reached in fewer years. Lower fixed cost per hour does not change the timing of the minimum-average-cost point in the same direction.
While ploughing, a two-wheel-drive tractor shows 30 % wheel slip. What is the most appropriate first action?
A. Add ballast or reduce the draft load until slip falls into the recommended range
30 % slip wastes power and wears tyres; more weight on the driving wheels or a lighter load reduces it. Removing ballast would raise slip further. Too little slip, on the other hand, signals excess ballast.
A custom hiring centre's tractor-implement set has annual fixed cost 240,000, planned use 800 h, and variable cost 900 per hour including operator. With a 15 % margin on full cost, what hire price per hour should it charge?
A. 1,380/h
Full cost = 240,000/800 + 900 = 1,200 per hour; price = 1,200 × 1.15 = 1,380. 1,200 has no margin; 1,335 applies the margin to variable cost only. 345/h applies the margin to the fixed part alone (300 × 1.15).
A central aim of supporting custom hiring centres under national mechanisation schemes is to:
B. Reach small and marginal farmers who cannot justify owning machines
Small holdings are below the break-even use for most machines; hire centres spread fixed cost across many farms. They complement, not replace, private ownership.
India's scheme launched in 2018 for Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi subsidised straw-management machines mainly to:
B. Reduce burning of paddy straw by managing it in the field
The in-situ crop residue management scheme supports machines that chop, spread or incorporate paddy straw, or sow wheat into it, so farmers need not burn residue before wheat sowing.
Ten here, 37 in the app. The Laisha app has every practice question we have written to ASRB NET in this subject, marked as you go, with timed papers, a jump-to-unanswered list and a certificate when you pass at 70 per cent.
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