OPTIMISATION OF RESOURCE-MEN AND MACHINE-FOR HARVEST MANAGEMENT OF SOUTH INDIAN SUGAR MILLS

摘要

The sugar Industry employees huge human labour and the slavery system of labour movements started with cane cultivation in other countries like South Africa, Mauritius etc. The urbanization and consequent migration of labour from rural areas, the improvement in the education level and standard of living has resulted in the reduction of cane harvest labour availability for the sugar factories in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra and parts of Maharashtra. The labour availability is bleak in future. This warrants introduction of suitable machineries and positive approach towards labour Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) activities by the sugar mills. The mechanization of operations like harvesting need large scale agronomic changes in the fields, of course not to mention about the time taken to bring out this change and the disadvantages of large scale harvesters. Hence, the cane harvest and supply will become more complicated in future. The need of the hour is an integrated approach of prudently mixing manual and mechanical harvesting to suit individual mills and a collective approach towards mobilization of labour would be the way forward for the sugar industries.