13 April 2010
Our local daily The Star today carried an interesting article on oil palm harvesting under the Commodities Talk Column by Reporter Hanim Adnan. Yes, the call to mechanize oil palm harvesting is very appropriate right now, and also then since 3 decades ago. Much R&D work on this subject had been done and is still going on at the  Malaysian Palm Oil Board(MPOB), but so far, no breakthrough technology has emerged to mechanize the harvesting process. The Mechanical Harvesting Pole(MHP) aside, the strategy now is to grow the dumpy oil palm, short but more productive species so that the harvesters do not need to use the long and clumsy harveting poles to harvest the bounty. I totally agree that harvesting should not be a labour-intensive process as what it is now, in the light of labour shortage in the plantations. I am sure estate and plantation managers would very much welcome farm robots working their fields, but are they able to recognise the ripe FFB to pluck?
P/S In memory of the late Tn Hj Ir. Ahmad bin Hitam (1949-2009) of MPOB, who spearheaded pioneering work in oil palm mechanization in PORIM/MPOB. Al-Fatihah....