Study of Coconut Tree Climber Use Efficiency over Traditional Methods in Chitradurga District of Karnataka

Abstract

Coconut is one of the most important crops under rainfed conditions in marginal soil of Chitradurga districts. Majority of the coconut growers in the district were facing the problem of theft of fallen nuts and shortage of skilled labor for nut harvesting. The traditional method of harvesting the nuts using knife with bamboo sticks for dwarf trees and climbing the tall trees was quite risky and accident prone. To overcome this problem, ICAR-Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Chitradurga conducted training programmes to unemployed rural farm youths in collaboration with Coconut Development Board, Cochin. Total 80 farm youths were trained during 2012-13. With the conventional coconut climbing, a person could harvest about 8-25 nuts/ tree while climbing the tree one had experienced body pain, muscles catch and lot of life risk with meager earnings of Rs.5,000-15,000/-year. After using the Coconut tree climber, annual income increased to Rs.20,000-60,000/-year and a person could climb more than 80-100 feet tall coconut tree without any life risk and harvesting efficiency increased to tune of 20-50 nuts/tree. This was encouraged many youths from surrounding villages to approach KVK to undergo training and choose coconut harvesting as an employment generation opportunity to meet their livelihood demand. Simultaneously, farmers were also benefitted by harvesting the nuts at right time and getting quality nuts also good price in the market.