Analysis of the Mechanization Index of Wheel Tractors in Rural Farm Holdings

Abstract

The Brazilian agriculture presents different production systems and a great variation of yield levels as a consequence of the regional inequality. These variations occur mainly because of the lack of technical information and financial support to acquire machinery and equipment used in agriculture. Considering the importance of this information, this study aimed to analyze the mechanization of agricultural properties in the municipality of Dracena/SP. The total number of land holdings in this area is 1,024 and only 149 have wheel tractors; they were classified into groups according to their sizes. Data collection was done through a questionnaire about the characteristics of the production system, mechanization resources, operational cost, and operational intensity. The statistical significance of the experimental data was evaluated by analyses of variance followed by Kruskal Wallis' test (P<0.05). The analysis revealed that the average values of the mechanization index and the farmed area by tractor were, respectively, 2.53 kW/ha and 103.9 ha/tractor. The analysis further revealed that the field operational cost was minimized with the maximization of the effective operational capacity for any area group.

Índice de mecanización agrícola de la Parroquia Crucita, Manabí - Ecuador

“…Gracias a la adopción de la ingeniería se han dinamizado y mejorado las condiciones de trabajo de los productores y sus familias (Negrete, 2006;Olaoye y Rotimi, 2010;Ayala-Garay et al, 2017;Van Loon et al, 2020) En la mecanización agrícola se diferencian tres niveles (humano, animal y motriz) considerando la fuente energética que emplee (Negrete, 2006;Shkiliova et al, 2014;Daum y Birner, 2020;Gavino et al, 2020;), adicional a esto se debe mencionar la incorporación de sensores, drones, robot, datos de información geográfica como lo mencionan Marinoudi et al (2019); Franco et al (2020) que han permitido la optimización de los recursos, considerándose este como un nuevo nivel. El tractor por su versatilidad es el símbolo principal para medir el índice de mecanización, cuyo cálculo emplea información básica del área de producción (Magalhães et al, 2013;Sharifi y Taki, 2016;Maheshwari y Tripathi, 2019).…”