India: Pay coconuts and get monkeys
The state's agricultural department feel sure that training monkey's is the best way to deal with a shortage of labour that stems from the fact that the work is hard and dangerous.
"Coconuts are essential to the traditional lifestyle and livelihood of the people of Kerala. However, the coconut business has dropped drastically due a shortage of tree climbers," K.R. Vijayakumar, deputy director of the Kerala agriculture department, said.
"So we have a proposal where monkeys can be trained to carry out the task of plucking coconuts. The animals can be better than humans in coconut plucking. And it will also be cost effective."
It's not the first time such an approach has been used - monkey's have been recruited for harvesting coconuts in Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. However, Mr Vijayakumar predicts that it may be more difficult to establish such practices in India, due to the presence of animal rights activists.
"Due to animal cruelty laws, animal rights groups may protest against the move. So we have not yet been able to pursue the proposal," Vijayakumar said.
However, he said like elephants are trained to pick up logs and ox trained to plough, monkeys too can be trained to pluck coconuts.
"Monkeys are smart animals and can get nuts from even tall and slender trees. Plucking coconuts is not a simple task," he said.
Kerala has more than 15 million coconut trees and requires at least 40,000 climbers to pick the fruits, according to data from Coconut Development Board in Kochi.
There has been a decline in people applying to work in coconut collection as migration levels have increased from the region and the remaining population become more educated and seek work based on hihger literacy levels.
"A trained monkey can climb 500 coconut trees a day. A human cannot climb more than 50 trees a day since it takes a person over 10 minutes to climb. This also involves a lot of risk," he said.
He suggested a training centre for monkeys, which could draw on the knowledge of trainers in Indonesia and Thailand.
Animal rights protestors are not the only source of opposition to the suggestion however. A member of the Coconut Development Board, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "A coconut tree produce about 60 nuts every 45 days and as it flowers continuously, the nuts ripen at different times. Monkeys being monkeys cannot decide whether a nut is ready to be plucked or not."
The board member favoured a mechanical approach instead.
Source: www.deccanherald.com