Coconut palm climbing with foot spikes in Fiji

Climbing coconut palms is by no means child's play! From the social and economic point of view, it is very challenging, especially for those who do it as part of their daily work. The countless palm-climbing techniques used demonstrate amazing human inventiveness.
It goes from: climbing the palm with bare hands; climbing with only a piece of wild vine, rope, or fabric attached either to feet or hands; climbing with a system of two ropes like in Brazil, climbing with spikes attached to feet or legs; climbing with various kind of ladders; turning the trunks into kinds of staircases by carving steps in the trunk (damaging) or, like in Sri Lanka, by attaching coconut husks with ropes to the trunk; using a system of two platforms, one controlled by arms and the other by legs; using equipment based only on human power; using equipment with an extra source of power; using monkeys to climb the palms; and even harvesting the coconuts with a robot, as tested in India.
COGENT needs to develop an International project to assess this question, to secure the coconut workers and increase the delay between regenerations in coconut genebanks.
To know more: www.cogentnetwo...