Improving coffee production in smalland medium farms inVeracruz, Mexico with the use of pneumatic equipment

Many coffee producing countries, including Mexico, are trying to introduce mechanization for this cultivation, in order to increase labor productivity levels and profitability. Mechanical assistance is particularly difficult during harvesting, indeed, differently from other crops, coffee plants have raceme flowers along branches, giving differing stages of fruit ripeness. Manual labor can be combined with the use of small mechanical instruments, aimed at increasing productivity and limiting fatigue, the most interesting of which are scissors, chain saws and poles (driven by various energy sources) used for pruning and harvesting, which are the operations that require a greater amount of labor, particularly on sloping plantations. This work describes the results of an appraised study of a compressed air tool for assisting coffee workers in the above-said operations. After analyzing previous studies on similar equipment, field testing was undertaken on a particularly harsh mountainous terrain, the Mexican states of Veracruz and Chiapas, using Italian made products.