Studies on comparative efficiency of different mechanical harvesters in coffee with reference to manual harvesting

摘要

Mechanization is relatively new and coffee still remains primarily as a hand crop. The coffee cultivation in countries like Brazil, USA (Hawaii) and Australia has been mechanized to a great extent to bring down dependence on human labour, which is very expensive in these countries. In countries including India, coffee is essentially grown in hilly and undulating terrain coupled with presence of shade trees and the operations are carried out mainly by human labour making mechanization in coffee virtually impossible.Among the plantation crops, coffee is one of the most labour intensive crop after tea in India. The annual requirement of labour for undertaking regular cultural operations is about 456 per ha in case of Arabica, 266 per ha in case of unirrigated Robustaand 326 per ha in case of irrigated Robusta coffee. The cost of labour alone constitutes about 70 per cent of the total cultivation costs in case of Arabica and about 59 to 65 per cent in case of Robusta coffee.