Author(s):

V Deepthi, E Karunasree, K Venkata Subbaiah, RVSK Reddy, G Shali Raju, A Devivaraprasad Reddy, T Vijaya Nirmala and JV Prasad

Abstract: Majority of the coconut growers in West Godavari district were facing the problem of theft of fallen nuts and shortage of skilled labour for nut harvesting. The traditional method of harvesting the nuts i.e. climbing the tall trees was quite risky and accident prone. To overcome this problem, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Venkataramannagudem has conducted training programmes to unemployed rural youths in collaboration with Coconut Development Board, Cochin. Total 240rural youths were trained during last five years. Out of 240 trainees 40 trainees were selected by using simple random sampling. The information pertaining to tree climber by traditional methods and advanced method of coconut tree climber was collected by using a well-structured pretested interview schedule. Eighty percent of the trainees were adopted the coconut tree climbing device for harvesting their own coconuts remaining 20 per cent of the trainees adopted the device for income generating purpose. For knowing the correlation between profile characteristics and adoption data were statistically analysed by using correlation analysis. Education, annual income, extension contact, mass media exposure, social participation, training exposure. risk preference were significantly correlated with adoption of coconut climbing device. With the conventional coconut climbing, a person could harvest about 10-25 nuts/ tree with meager earnings of Rs.10000-15000/-year. After using the coconut tree climber, annual income increased to Rs.20000-40000/-year and a person could climb coconut tree without any life risk.

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