MECHANIZATION OF SUGARCANE HARVESTER - OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

摘要

The most laborious and tedious task of sugarcane agriculture is harvesting. Cane harvesting is a labour intensive operation and on an average about 150-200 man-days are required for harvesting about 80 MT cane including cutting cane, cleaning/ stripping, removal of green tops, bundling and loading in transport vehicles. About 15% labour is required for cane cutting and rest 85% is required for dressing and cleaning of cane, bundling and loading in transport vehicles. Harvesting labour is becoming scarce and costly. Hence, mechanized harvesting is regarded as sine-qua-non to reduce the human drudgery and enhance the agricultural productivity. We are working on chopper as well as Whole Cane Harvester for last one decade. The working number of harvesters also studied such as Carib, Class, Bonel, Cameco, Bunmei of Thailand, LCT Hansen of Chinese make, Jord, John Deere 3520 W and New Holland 4000 series. In 2010 we purchased New Holland 4000 series chopper harvester so as to overcome acute shortage of agricultural labourers. We organised the demonstrations of New Holland 4000 series Vs. John Deere 3520 in the same larger field in 2010-11 to evaluate the effectiveness and suitability to the soils.