Local tools for cocoa beans harvesting

Cocoa remains one of the main cash crops in Cameroon. It’s production is labour intensive. These ranges from weeds to pest control. However harvest is very labour intensive. This is because it’s involved breaking to removal of the cocoa beans from the pud. Removing is not too difficult but it destroys the nails which turn to be very painful especially if the farm was not well treated with fungicides. Dear agricultural practitonals I wish to have some suggestions about possible local tools that can be used in cocoa beans removal.

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“The best way of opening the pods is to use a wooden club which, if it strikes the central area of the pod, causes it to split into two halves; it is then easy to remove the wet beans by hand. A cutting tool, such as a machete, is often used to split the pod, though this can damage the beans.”

Depending on your processing setup, you could use a large nutcracker-like press to open the pods.

Thank you. Actually i wanted something to protect my fingers. It’s very painful after each harvest. But I finally found a solution. Hand cloves.

Thank you. This is also good. In addition hand clove can be used to protect the nails