Palm Oil Engineering Bulletin No.135 (Apr - Jun 2020) p16-20
MPOB Initiatives in Oil Palm Mechanisation Adoption Increment and Towards Agriculture 4.0
Mohd Azwan Mohd Bakri*; Mohd Khairul Fadzly Md Radzi*; Mohd Ramdhan Mohd Khalid*; Ahmad Syazwan Ramli*; Mohd Ikmal Hafizi Azaman*; Mohd Rizal Ahmad* and Salmah Jahis*

Agriculture mechanisation is a field activity that combines technology as a prime power and human operator as the manipulator. Improving the worker’s productivity by increasing speed of work is a significant to agricultural practices. The implementation of farm mechanisation in Malaysian oil palm plantation has increased the land to labour ratio. The ratio represents the requirement of human labour to operate the palm area. Currently, overall land to labour ratio for Malaysian oil palm plantation is 1:10 ha (Kushairi et al., 2019). However, the figures for individual operations such as harvesting and evacuation are typically higher, such as 1:20 ha or 1:30 ha, which are similar for estates that practice total mechanisation. The system which employs field operation also determined the land to labour ratio. The tasking work system could usually reach higher percentage of land to labour ratio as compared to communal work system (Ludin et al., 2014). In the tasking work system, labour is assigned with specific work. Thus, the endeavour could achieve better productivity since the labour focused on only specific job. Similarly, This is similar for mechanisation practice, where usually a machine or a tool focuses on a specific job. This makes mechanisation much more productive.





Author information:
azwan.bakri@mpob.gov.my