LAS CRUCES >> This week, a group of investors and inventors will launch a test run they believe could be the New Mexico chile industry's saving grace.
The group plans scaled-up trial runs of both mechanized harvesting and de-stemming of green chile — both considered key steps in the overall attempt to mechanize the harvest of green chile. Experts and farmers have said mechanization is the best way to halt, and even reverse, a long-term trend of declining chile acreage in New Mexico.
Now, the green chile crop is hand-harvested by laborers — a job that has proven troublesome, engineering-wise, to switch over to machines. That's thanks to relatively delicate chile pods that tend to bruise easily and difficulties replicating a task now done by laborers in the field: the removal of undesirable stems from peppers.
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