Friday, February 25, 2011

Sri Lanka: Tea plantation

This is a tea plant.  At least I think it is. 

 After the tea is picked it is dumped on these open-air grates to dry.  There's none to be seen because I visited during a full moon holiday (seriously).  I did not know that there are four parts of the tea plant that make very different teas:  Leaves, stems, and two parts of the flower.  In the past they'd use human workers to separate the four parts.  Recently they bought a machine:
Using some type of infared scanning the machine is able to pull apart the dried plant and separate them into the four parts.

No doubt many workers were laid off as a result.  This is a good example to use in my supply chain class:  In the long run it is unquestionably better for the company and the country to have devices like this replace human labor, but in the short run the unemployment hurts.

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