Faced with a growing labour shortage and rising wages, an apple grower in Kotkhai, Shimla district, has turned to technology to make orchard operations easier. Sunil Chauhan has installed a petrol-run monorail system to transport plucked apples from his orchard to the warehouse.
“The monorail can carry up to 500 kg. It can transport apple boxes, crates, manure, fertilisers, tools and many other things required for farm operations,” Chauhan said.
The system runs on a track laid at a slight elevation in the orchard and, according to Chauhan, can operate efficiently on slopes of up to 45 degrees. He is currently conducting trial runs and says the system is working smoothly.
Chauhan imported the monorail from China at a cost of around Rs 4.20 lakh. He said he planned to explore more technological solutions to reduce the burden of manual labour in apple cultivation.
“There is an agriculture fair in China where the latest tools and technologies in agriculture are displayed. I will visit the fair again to see what else we can get from there to make farm operations easier,” he said.
Chauhan believes mechanisation is becoming increasingly important for apple growers in Himachal Pradesh, where orchard management remains largely dependent on manual labour, including workers from Nepal. The growing scarcity of workers and rising labour costs have added to the challenges faced by growers.
“Whenever we visit apple-growing countries like Italy, we notice that orchards are fully mechanised. The orchards there are much bigger than ours, yet they are all mechanised,” he said.
Hilly terrain and small landholdings remain major obstacles to mechanisation in Himachal Pradesh. However, Chauhan believes that even small interventions can make a significant difference to orchard management.
He has laid 100 metres of track in his orchard and plans to extend it by another 200 metres at different locations and in different directions.
“It will reduce my dependence on labour to a large extent,” he said.
