Non-technical discussion - mechanization

[Hugh Harries]

Written in response to the recent exchanges between Michael Camiolo,  Dr.V.Murugappan, Reynato Dubongco, Surya Prakash & P.Sekar on the subject of  "Your search for economically feasible coconut-picking machines"

In August 2009 the Kerala State industries minister offered innovative thinkers a prize of Rs.1 million (US$2155 / €1442) to develop a machine to pluck coconuts. According to Dr. Murugappan, this search for machinery arises due to labour shortage rather than from a consideration of worker safety. For many years politicians and trade unionists in Kerala discouraged mechanisation of the coconut industry with the argument that workers would lose their jobs but now it is jobs, such as climbing, that are losing their workers! And who can blame people, if they prefer to work, sitting in the air conditioned comfort of a call centre, rather than clinging to a coconut palm stem in the heat of the sun, or breathing the smoky and smelly atmosphere of a copra factory drying shed?

There are three manual operations in coconut production that will be difficult, impossible or just too expensive to mechanize economically:

1. harvesting, either by climbing, or with a knife on a long pole;
2. using a spike to peel the husk from individual nuts; and
3. breaking nuts into halves and cutting-out fresh meat or copra with a spoon-shaped knife, either before or  after drying in the sun or over a fire.
   

The lack of mechanization was called into question at an APCC meeting in 1994 and the delegates were advised that, unless value-added-products replaced copra, the coconut industry would enter the 21st century still using 19th century production methods. "Plucking, peeling and picking" are unavoidable domestic chores of long standing but  copra drying was not a "traditional" occupation of any importance before the early1800s. It had to be "invented" as a convenient means of storing coconuts that would otherwise  germinate or rot. In that way there would be  a readily available cargo, particularly on remote Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, that trading schooners could load, for onward transhipment to Europe or north America. At first, nuts that were surplus to requirements could be picked up, after falling from the palm, split open, left to dry in the sun, accumulated in an atap go-down and, eventually, be offered in exchange for trade goods. The lazy man's crop indeed!

As the demand for industrial vegetable oil increased copra became the major occupation on many tropical trade routes.  The appearance of a boat on the horizon would start a dash to collect additional nuts by climbing and to use open fires to speed up drying so that as much as possible could be loaded on the the boat before it departed.  The poor quality of some smoke dried copra then necessitated the construction of improved driers, soon followed by the organization of copra marketing boards and culminating in government price control legislation, still widely in force today. All these developments were adopted  (sooner or later) in most coconut growing countries (Ceylon first and Siam last?) almost to the exclusion of alternative technologies (until recent VCO activity).

Fan-assisted, hot-air driers that can dry large quantities quickly, were powered (believe it or not) by imported diesel fuel so production costs were increased by the 1970s OPEC (petroleum oil) crisis; then came the "tropical oil" attack on palm oil and coconut oil by the US soybean producers in the 1980s; and, in the 1990s, direct competition from genetically-modified (GM) high-lauric rapeseed (canola) made it seem that coconut might not compete with other oil crops even if copra production could be mechanized.

There are certain jobs in which climbing the palm is unavoidable. The most obvious being toddy tapping and harvesting immature fruit for drinking. Reynato Dubongco describes "bamboos made like a bridge in the sky" in Quezon province in the Philippines where the  demand for buko requires entire bunches of immature fruit to be lowered on ropes, because they will split if simply allowed to fall.  But that sort of "high" technology is only appropriate where the product  is in demand at a price that will cover the cost . The long-term answer is to use orchard ladders and replant regularly before the previous planting gets out of reach; as is (or should be) done in coconut hybrid seed gardens.
 
Existing mechanical equipment, such as the mobile cranes used for repairing city street lights suggested by Surya Prakash, are of limited usefulness where there are intercrops like cocoa and are complicated and costly, as P. Sekar pointed out in reply. The recently invented "coconet" would be too expensive to attach to every palm in a plantation but protects insurance companies from paying costs of damage done by falling fruit in urban locations. Consideration of cost is essential and the need to economize puts limits on possibilities. Even the lightweight poles used by Sundar, of bamboo if available or aluminum if affordable, have a limited reach, although the 20-25ft (6-8m) in P. Sekars reply can be doubled when inpecunious harvesters (in desperation) bind a second pole to the first (with rubber strips cut from truck inner-tubes).

Michael Camiolo is correct to advise "Rather than searching for machines, search for ways to improve the coconut-picking process". But his out-of-the-box suggestion, air-bags for people that would inflate if a climber falls, is out-of-this-world. The principle may indeed be the same as NASA used to land on Mars but just imagine what the NASA scientists might have designed had they first studied the excellent protection given to falling coconuts by the husk?

Joking aside, instead of trying to mechanize the existing manual operations it would be better to avoid them and take advantage of the coconut's natural characteristics - fruit that fall to the ground when ripe and remain there for months. This means that the palms do not have to be "plucked" at all, they are self-harvested.

Two objections to allowing nuts to drop are that they would be lost in the undergrowth or stolen. A less obvious objection is that the fruit to be collected, falling at random, will require the whole area to be searched, every time. There are other things to consider, as can be expected whenever changes are proposed, not necessarily problems, but these can be discussed if there is enough interest. To generate that interest, a brief answer to the first three objections is that the equipment needed for weed control already exists; and that money no longer needed for climbers becomes available to resolve the stealing and collecting questions by using familiar modern communications technology.

There is more to say but I shall wait for some feedback before writing more.

Hugh

[David Lobo]

Hugh,
Very informative and interesting information. 
A big market increasing annually, is for tender coconuts. Even replanting by hybrids will still have trees out of reach for some years.  Some equipment still seems to be needed. 
David

2009/11/28 Hugh Harries <hugh.h...@gmail.com>

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David Lobo
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