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<pre>I find this digest very interesting, there are several subjects I would like
to contribute to.
One is quality, another is mechanical harvesting vs. manual picking, human
work vs. machines.

In Italy there are various traditional methods. In central Tuscany we use
hand picking for several reasons:
a) tradition
The old plantations with trees over 30 - 50 years of age are not suited for
mechanical harvesting because the trees are to rigid and would be dammaged.
For being suited for mechanical harvesting, the plantation should be planned
for that from beginning, for instance for the measures of the plantation
grid and the type of cutting. 6x6 meters (minimum 5x5) is good for hand
picking but not ideal for mechanical harvesting.
Tradition also helps us find pickers. Although disoccupation is a problem,
fruit pickers often come from the south or other mediterranian countries,
because it is a hard work, not highly paid. Fortunately this is not yet a
problem for us because there are many people who consume a lot of olive oil
in family (about 50 - 60 kg a year for a normal family, Tuscany consumes
more olive oil than it produces). So these people are willing to "earn"
their olive oil with picking rather than buy it. So there is no problem with
minimum wages, everybody earns for what he picks and not for how long he
works. The gross price at the mill HERE is about 14-15.000 Lire for 1 kg of
medium - good olive oil, the detail price goes from 7.000 Lire for lower
quality (of couse, imported!!) up to 20-30.000 Lire for the best qualities
(1 US$ is about 2.000 Lire). The pickers get paid in olives, they get
normally about 50% of the harvest. A good picker can do about 100 - 120 kg a
day, considering that days in november are not very long. I myself pick
about 60 - 80 kg a day.
I read about wages of 12-15 $ (is that with taxes, and what kind of $, US or
AUS?) So considering an 8 hours day that would be about 100 - 120 $ a day.
The 100 kg of olives that I mentioned corresponds to about 15 kg of oil, the
pay is 50% at a net price (minus milling cost) of about 13.000 Lire/kg so
totally about 100.000 Lire for a good picker. I think this is about 110 NZ$.
Seems that there isn't a big difference
By the way, never seen a 10 year old tree that produces 70 kg of olives. We
have some 40 year olds that produce sometimes about 60 kg, but one cannot
count on that for every tree and of course not every year. The medium
productivity is about 25 - 30 kg per adult tree (10 years is not yet really
adult)

b) quality
We believe that hand picking gives a better quality for several reasons.
First of all, when you pick manually, you can do that earlier. An early
harvest guarantees a better quality. Our oil has 0.1-0.2% free acidity and a
very good fruity, peppery taste. The legal limit for extra vergin oil is 1%,
a limit which we consider quite high. The difference in taste from 0.2% to
0.5% is already sensible. We sometimes buy oil from other farmers, never
over 0.3%.
Picking mechanically in this early period leaves a lot of olives on the
tree, so you get less production. Picking later gives more production but
worse quality because olives start to shrink and the insect attacks are are
more sensible.
There are also chemical products (producing ethylene) that let the olives
fall more easyly, so you can pick them earlier and mor completely. But they
are not very secure, the efficiency varies very much and they influence also
the quality of the olives and the oil.
To say the truth, we decided from the beginning to work manually, so we
don't have practical experience with mechanical harvesting which might be
anyway the better solution for very large plantations and the medium market.
We sell all oil directly at good prices (26.000 Lire per liter-bottle), so
we are not interested in big quantities but in excellent quality.
I saw large olive plantations in Tunisia where olives fell directly to the
ground and were collected there after some time. This is done also in
southern Italy. I think it is quite clear that this oil cannot have a good
quality.

c) practical reasons
Mecanical harvesters (vibrators & shakers) work best on plain grounds,
maximum 10% slope. We live in hills with up to more than 20% slope, so it is
not very useful to grow here a plantation for mecanical harvesting.
Mecanical harvesting is also only interesting for areas with very large
cultivations, as a machine costs too much for a small number of trees. In
our area nobody harvests mecanically, so it would have been useless to rent
the harvester for only 1000 olives.
I have read also about small handhold pneumatic harvesters, but I have never
seen them or tried them. When the generation of people will have died that
are interested in harvesting to get their own oil, we will face this
problem.

Of course many of these considerations are not valid for countries with
other traditions and conditions. So it is undoubtedly worth the while to
calculate well the use of mecanical harvesters for big plantations. One
could also think about service centers that could serve more than one
smaller farmer if they are not too far away from each other.
For more informations you could study the book "olivicoltura intensiva
meccanizzata" (intensive mecanized cultivation of olives) by Giuseppe
Fontanazza, printed in Italy by Edagricole, Bologna. I don't know if there
is a translation in english.
The site http://www.geocities.com/~gianno/angi2.html is well made and gives
much useful information.

Regards Volker


----- Original Message -----
From: <OliveOil@onelist.com>
To: <OliveOil@onelist.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 1999 3:36 AM
Subject: [OliveOil] Digest Number 140



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There are 25 messages in this issue.

Topics in today's digest:

1. RE: Pollinators
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
2. RE: Convention in Paris
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
3. RE: Convention in Paris
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
4. RE: supply of trees
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
5. RE: supply of trees
From: "chris sutton" <cpsutton@hotmail.com>
6. Re: supply of trees
From: "Edward Faridany" <ekf@lineone.net>
7. Re: supply of trees
From: "John Fenn" <johnfenn@comswest.net.au>
8. Syria
From: "multimania syrie" <syrie@multimania.com>
9. Syria
From: "multimania syrie" <syrie@multimania.com>
10. Syria
From: "multimania syrie" <syrie@multimania.com>
11. olive producers
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Antonio_Giann=F2?= <janoant@tin.it>
12. Re:Mechanical Harvesters Used to Harvest Olives
From: "Adin A. Hester" <adin@goldstate.net>
13. Re: Re:Mechanical Harvesters Used to Harvest Olives
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Antonio_Giann=F2?= <janoant@tin.it>
14. Re: Pollinators
From: "Mengyuan country guesthouse, B&B" <fod@ozemail.com.au>
15. Re: Syria
From: "YF & CS CHEW" <birding@es.co.nz>
16. Re: Syria
From: "YF & CS CHEW" <birding@es.co.nz>
17. Re: Re:Mechanical Harvesters Used to Harvest Olives
From: "John Fenn" <johnfenn@comswest.net.au>
18. RE: supply of trees
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
19. RE: supply of trees
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
20. RE: Re:Mechanical Harvesters Used to Harvest Olives
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
21. RE: Pollinators
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
22. RE: Syria
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
23. RE: Pollinators
From: "Phil Bramley" <bramleyp@one.net.au>
24. Re: Digest Number 139
From: Sweton@haymarket.com.au
25. Re: Re:Mechanical Harvesters Used to Harvest Olives
From: "Mengyuan country guesthouse, B&B" <fod@ozemail.com.au>
</pre>
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