In order to speed up the task of cotton plucking and make it more efficient, the SIMA Cotton Development & Research Association (SIMA CD & RA), an affiliate of the Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA), has launched a battery-powered, handheld cotton-plucking machine. The machine was launched by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI)’s Chairman, Prem Malik, at a function held in Coimbatore.
On the occasion, SIMA’s chairman, C K Narayanasaami said the step will help farmers to cope up with shortage of labour, further heightened by crop conditions of the country, which offer 4 to 5 pickings in a season. Elaborating on the efforts that led to this feat, Narayanasaami said the success of this project was followed by the failure of two earlier ventures, one of which was a tie-up with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and the second was a test of Chinese-make hand picking machine. He said, they dropped out of both the projects due to lack of scale and technological viability.
The cotton-plucking machine, priced Rs 9,900, including all necessary accessories, taxes and agent commissions, has been developed in collaboration with Point Industries, Coimbatore. Narayanasaami also stated that the association has requested the state government to provide a subsidy of Rs 5,000 per machine and a cut in VAT to the tune of five percent to make it more cost-effective. The machine is expected to cut the cost of picking by about 5 to 7 per cent.
