Adoption Of Mechanical Harvesting Research Articles

Drivers of Adoption: Mechanical Harvesting in the Corporate Sector Tea Plantations in Sri Lanka

Tea industry experts emphasize that selective manual harvesting is the best way to maintain leaf quality while preserving tea plant health. However, tea plantations tend to adopt mechanical harvesting to overcome labour shortages and harvesting costs. But the adoption of mechanical harvesting is still low, prompting further investigations. The purpose of this study is to investigate tea plantation managers’ concerns about the factors influencing mechanical harvesting adoption based on a case study as the research strategy. The results demonstrated that the majority of determinants that emerged, as drivers are consistent with the latent constructs, defined in adoption theories. Key drivers are employees’ attitudes, facilitation, continuous monitoring, training of women and skill development through regular practice. The organizational factors that cannot be explained through adoption theories were isolated. The findings concluded that multi-dimensional factors have emerged as the driving force, which will be useful to anyone looking into the real application.

​Use of Defoliants for Achieving Improved Productivity and Quality of Cotton: A Review

Cotton is one of the most important cash crop grown for its fibre, which is the raw material for the textile industry. In India, the average yield and profitability of cotton cultivation are low as compared to developing countries. The main reason for this is hand picking of bolls, which is labour intensive resulting into low income of cotton growers. Furthermore, in India, most of the cotton varieties are indeterminate where the bolls do not mature at the same time and thus requires repeated hand pickings. Whereas the developed countries have 100% mechanized cotton picking due to determinate or semi-determinate plant types. Adoption of mechanical harvesting in India is dependent upon the availability of suitable cotton varieties as well as defoliants, desiccants, boll openers, growth hormones and re-growth inhibitors (Thatikunta et al., 2018). Defoliation before cotton harvesting is very important to maintain the quality of produce. In this paper, a comprehensive review is presented on effect and timing of application of defoliants on physiological characteristics of cotton. This will help in developing further research proposals to develop plant types for mechanical harvesting and use of defoliates to produce good fiber quality and increased farm income.

Saúde Respiratória e Mecanização da Colheita da Cana-de-Açúcar nos Municípios Paulistas: a importância do Protocolo Agroambiental

Resumo: A assinatura do Protocolo Agroambiental do estado de São Paulo em 2007, devido a uma série de motivações econômicas e sociais, desencadeou rápido processo de mecanização da colheita de cana-de-açúcar. O impacto direto da mecanização é a redução das queimadas, prática adotada na colheita manual e que causa sérios problemas respiratórios na população. Nesse contexto, o objetivo principal desse estudo foi verificar se a mecanização da colheita (no município e em seus vizinhos) efetivamente trouxe benefícios à saúde respiratória da população de localidades com produção de cana. Para isso, foram considerados dados da proporção de cana colhida de forma mecanizada nos municípios paulistas entre os anos de 2006 e 2011, bem como referentes às internações por problemas respiratórios no período, sendo a relação entre estas testada por estimações econométricas. Para garantir robustez aos resultados, foram utilizadas diversas estratégias empíricas e características municipais para controlar "fatores de confusão", como indicadores meteorológicos, geográficos e socioeconômicos. Foram encontrados resultados que sugerem uma relação negativa e significativa entre a mecanização e as internações por problemas respiratórios, evidenciando o impacto positivo da mecanização da colheita sobre a saúde respiratória da população, em especial nos idosos, que são mais suscetíveis a sofrer por tais patologias.

EFFECTS OF SHORT-TERM DROUGHT STRESS AND MECHANICAL HARVESTING ON SWEET ORANGE TREE HEALTH, WATER UPTAKE AND YIELD

ISHS I International Symposium on Mechanical Harvesting and Handling Systems of Fruits and Nuts EFFECTS OF SHORT-TERM DROUGHT STRESS AND MECHANICAL HARVESTING ON SWEET ORANGE TREE HEALTH, WATER UPTAKE AND YIELD

Harvest Cost and Citrus Mechanization: Real Options Approach with Least Squares Monte Carlo Simulation

The prospect of immigration policy reform has renewed growers' concerns of serious labor shortages and cost increases because a large portion (at least 53%) of the workforce in agriculture is unauthorized for U.S. employment. This concern of labor cost increase is more serious for specialty crop agriculture, not only because it is highly labor intensive, but also it requires labor in a very short period, particularly at harvest time. Agricultural employers may address the increased labor cost, especially harvest cost in various ways, but likely options include adoption of mechanical harvesting. If we focus on adoption of mechanical harvesting, the most imminent effect of immigration policy reform might be on crops mainly used for processing for which labor-intensive technology is currently employed, but an alternative, less labor-intensive technology is already developed. Florida citrus is a current example of a major specialty crop with these characteristics. In addition, the Florida citrus industry is facing many difficulties, from recent hurricanes to new diseases to increased international competition, all of which may urge immediate mechanization of harvesting operation intended for cost reduction. Currently, the estimated cost of mechanical harvesting of Florida oranges for juice processing suggests a significant cost advantage over hand harvesting, but the adoption of mechanical harvesting systems remains relatively low at about 7.5% of the Florida orange acreage. In order to study the mechanization-investment decision by the Florida citrus farmers, we firstly estimate the value for two operational modes (hand and mechanical harvesting) using the net present value (NPV) approach. While, the NPV approach simply compares NPVs from the two operational modes, the real options approach (ROA), which applies financial option theory for investment in real assets, assumes that the farmer does not invest until the NPV of the mechanical harvesting operation is greater than that of the current operation by margin of the option value of investment. Option valuation with early exercise features with multiple stochastic factors has the so-called dimensionality problem. The ROA study for the Florida citrus mechanization is one of these cases since there are at least four stochastic factors: price, yield, production cost, and harvest cost. We overcome this dimensionality problem by using the least squares Monte Carlo simulation (Longstaff and Schwartz 2001) which solves the dynamic optimization problem posed by the Bellman equation, where the value of continuation is computed on the basis of a regression on cross-sectional data.