Tobacco Harvester May Help Solve Farmers' Labor Problem

Source from:  By Gregory A. Hall ghall@courier-journal.com The Courier-Journal 01/23/2007

Putting up tobacco is a hands-on process and growers have relied on migrant workers to help Tobacco harvesting machine With many tobacco farmers complaining about a labor shortage, a Louisville firm is marketing a mechanical burley harvester that it says modernizes the ages-old, by-hand process of cutting and storing the crop. "This is really the industrial revolution for burley tobacco," said Jeff Androla, president of the company, GCH International. Androla said he doesn't see how farmers can continue to find the labor needed to cut tobacco in the traditional way. The U.S. Agriculture Department said some Kentucky burley growers couldn't harvest their crop in time last year because they couldn't get enough workers. "We feel we've got a product that solves (the) labor problem, barn space. I've got growers that are trucking their tobacco 35 miles one way to hang it," Androla said. GCH teamed up about a year ago with a company formed by the University of Kentucky engineers who had been developing the harvester since the early 1980s. GCH exclusively builds and markets the machines, which sell as the Gold Standard Harvesting System for $379,000 each. Last year was the first year for the harvesters to be in fields, with two in Kentucky and one in Illinois, Androla said. One of the participating growers, Mark Roberts of Pleasureville, Ky., said the machine had some bugs last year, when he harvested about 25 of his 96 acres with it. But "I believe the problems that we were having have all been solved, and I believe the machine is going to be very usable this year," Roberts said. While other farm ventures mechanized years ago, burley was more difficult to handle than other crops. Also, government price supports allowed for many small growers, said Larry Wells, one of the UK engineers. Wells said the effort to develop a harvester hit a snag in the mid-1990s when it looked like it wouldn't be commercially viable. But the 2004 federal tobacco buyout that ended price supports revived interest, he said. The need for mechanization wasn't as great until the labor market tightened in the last couple of years, Roberts said. Some farmers have said that they may cut production because of the labor shortages, which come in the wake of the national push for immigration and border control. Kentucky growers rely heavily on migrant labor, primarily from Mexico, and many have complained that the existing guest-worker program is inefficient. The GCH machine requires two people, Androla said, an operator and a person to assist. Androla said about five growers are seriously considering ordering the harvester. Producing one machine would take up to four months, but making them in multiples could shorten that time, he said. If the profit margin on tobacco were larger, Roberts said farmers would be snatching up the harvesters, which are 35 feet long, 12½ feet wide and about 11 feet tall. The machine can cut three plants per second -- meaning about eight acres could be harvested in a 13-hour day, Androla said. The harvester can reduce labor costs -- which require roughly 60 to 70 man-hours per acre -- by 80 percent, Androla said. The driver positions the harvester at the head of a row and a sensor guides it down the row. Two tines stick out off the front end, and a 14-inch saw blade cuts the plant at its base. Once cut, the tobacco plants move up a conveyor and are flipped over before being put on a curing frame at the rear of the machine. When the curing frame is full, the machine drops it in the field, where the tobacco can cure covered until it is stripped. The amount of leaf breakage or loss is less with the machine than by hand, Roberts said. "To me, that was very surprising, and the quality of the tobacco coming out of the frames after it's cured is as good as any barn would be." The curing frames, which cost $808 each, hold almost 450 plants, meaning 15 frames are needed to harvest one acre. Androla said the harvesting system's price hasn't been an issue to buyers so far. The cost is "a pretty sizable investment, but it's no more of an investment than a corn combine and the facilities it would take to have large acres of corn," Roberts said. And, he said, the harvester may be more economical than the lumber and labor needed for constructing tobacco barns. Still, UK tobacco economist Will Snell said the six-figure harvester cost makes mechanization difficult for smaller growers. There are about three brands of harvesters on the market now, including the GCH model, he said. "We've got to tailor our mechanization towards the scale of producer that we have in the state, and at this point we don't have a lot of 100-, 200-acre growers," Snell said at the Kentucky Farm Bureau Convention last month. Because of the current costs, mechanization in harvesting is "more of a long-term solution," Snell said. "I think short term, given the scale of our tobacco producers, we'd like to still rely more upon an adequate supply of labor to get the crop produced." Androla, a former Philip Morris employee, said several growers sharing a harvester "is not out of the question. Matter of fact, it's probably the best model that exists to have two or three or four guys with 25 acres apiece. Is it for the three- and four-acre guy? No, it's not." Wells said the next challenge for the harvester is seeing whether the market accepts it and how production evolves as a result. The greatest potential for a labor-cost reduction would be in mechanized stripping of tobacco, Snell said. GCH is building a prototype for an automated burley stripper, Androla said. The company hopes to test one during the upcoming growing season. "We'll have a complete (picking and stripping) process at that point," he said. That prospect intrigues Roberts. "Both of them together would, you know … really totally change things," he said. Reporter Gregory A. Hall can be reached at (502) 582-4087. Enditem