Total mechanised harvesting of Kangra tea need of the hour

The major tea plantations of the Kangra valley have adopted the latest techniques of manufacturing and plucking green leaves of tea keeping in view the acute shortage of labour that had forced 50 per cent growers to abandon their gardens in the past 20 years. However, many tea growers are yet to switch over to the latest mechanisation techniques.

Today, there is an urgent need for improving productivity, quality and the overall economics of tea plantations in the Kangra valley. It may be recalled that at the international and national levels, tea production has increased but in the Kangra valley the tea production, which was over 17 lakh kilo in 1998, has declined to 12 lakh kilo.

Kangra tea has the intrinsic quality and is on a par with the world famous teas but is still struggling for existence. The main reasons for such a situation are the non-availability of skilled workers, high cost of production, small volume of production that, too, diversified in green and black types and heterogeneity in the finished product. The mechanisation of farm operations in tea plantations across tea-growing countries has been evolved to tackle labour shortage and complete on time farm operations, particularly leaf harvesting.

Japan, China, Russia and Australia are the tea-growing countries that had designed and fabricated machines as per their needs where almost the entire harvesting was done mechanically. However, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia were using machines as a tool only to tackle the peak flush period. Today, Kangra also needs complete mechanisation for managing the future labour shortage problem.

Even African countries, which in general are considered to be labour sufficient, particularly in central and southern regions, have also adopted partial mechanical harvesting. “Kangra tea has a glorious history, decades’ old unique quality of this tea, which brought international recognition in the past through medals and certificates, should not be compromised. Therefore, there is need to adopt a plucking strategy that restricts the deterioration of the quality of the harvested leaf to the minimum,” says KG Butail, a leading tea grower of Palampur

He says that the Agriculture Department, which looks after tea in Himachal Pradesh, should own the responsibility of educating growers on handling and using machines. The core issue of repairing and servicing machines should also not be overlooked, he adds.

Himachal Tribune