TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT FOR FARMING

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Food items processed from green plums and dates are highly popular as health-boosting foods, but removing the pits has not been an easy job for short-handed farms. But now five years of research has led to the invention of a machine that automatically removes the plum and date pits, lightening the workload for farmers and boosting their incomes.

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​Ripe green plums hang from the branches. Farmers harvest the lovingly tended fruit, but their work does not end here. In order to sell processed plum products, the pits have to be removed individually by hand. This is a time-consuming hassle for farms who are already short-handed.

[Soundbite] KIM SEUNG-HEE(GREEN PLUM FARMER) : "I used to split them open by hand when I made green plum sauce or pickled green plums."

In order to address this issue, engineers came up with a machine that automatically removes the pits, after 5 years of R&D. Farmers just have to put green plums into the machine and let it cut into the fruits and take out the pits. The machine can process about 36 kilograms of green plums per hour. It saves more than 30% in labor compared to manual work. Farmers who had to sell unprocessed whole green plums because they didn't have the manpower can now boost their incomes by making pickled plums and other processed foods.

[Soundbite] SUNG JE-HOON(RURAL DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION) : "Farmers can make about 20 times more money if they sell plum-processed foods."

This pitting and slicing machine was also modified to process dates. Using the machine not only saves labor cost but also improves the quality of the processed products by slicing dates into uniform size and shape.