This tea picking robot in South India will be a solution for labour shortage. What about other aspects like quality and ethics ?
Tea is a way of life in this subcontinent. Indians can’t imagine a day with out their favorite cuppa. Indian Darjeeling, Assam and Nilgiri teas are always a treat to sip. Anyway, labour shortage is one of the burning issued faced by South Asian tea growers like India and Sri Lanka. As SMB Story had reported, Valparai, a hill station in Tamil Nadu, is renowned for its production of high-quality teas. Yet, the once bustling valleys filled with labourers, now face a shortage as many labourers have migrated to the plains for better opportunities. In conversation with SMBStory, G Sundarrajan, CEO and Co-founder of Surinova, which provides business solutions to the farming sector, recalls that around 20 years ago, Valparai had about five lakh people in its electoral rolls which have now reduced to just a lakh, highlighting the impact of migration in the region. Previously, South Indian plantations needed 6,000 labourers for a harvest cycle, but now only 1,300 are available. To address this labour shortage and ensure continuous tea harvests, Surinova introduced a tea robot / e-vehicle called “T-Rover” in 2022.
Process
T-Rover is designed to navigate slopes up to 30 degrees with ease through its sensors and controllers and its precision engineering picks tea leaves for processing. As an e-vehicle, it saves on fuel costs and keeps the plantation environment clean. T-Rover is operated remotely via a joystick-like controller and is easy to use even for semi-skilled workers.
This robot can do the work of 28 people, requiring just one operator and two assistants. This innovation opens up opportunities for people to pursue or rover operator jobs, thus stemming the tide of migration from their hometowns.
The company is now in talks with other tea growing countries like Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania, etc, to export their machine.
It’s true that machines like this will provide some relief to labour shortage, but the quality of product is up to the questions, as South Indian climate is more tropical. So there are tea flsuhes at different ages and stanges of the bush. In temperate countries like Japan and China where they experince seasons, generally use machines during Summer and Early autumn. Also in temperate countries tea flushes emerge at once and located at the same level of tea bush. They limit machine harvesting during spring season when they get their first flush considering the quality of end product. Therefore, it would be better to use this machine during high cropping seasons in tropical countries.
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References
- Main Source: https://yourstory.com/smbstory/a-tea-picking-robot-is-solving-labour-shortage-tea-industry-surinova
