Farm machinery utilization in a row-crop producer region / Diagnóstico da mecanização em uma região produtora de grãos

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

The intensive farm machinery use in Brazil started in the 1960?s with the establishment of national tractor industry and followed by farm machinery industries. These industries promoted a quick expansion in agricultural mechanization, which today is essential. Although with undeniable benefits, agricultural mechanization was influenced by external technology in machinery projects and the use of inadequate techniques such as soil tillage, which brought erosion problems. Regarding the recent characteristics of agricultural mechanization, there is little information related to farm machinery indexes, so, it is not possible a comparison among equipments and to optimize their use in farms. This study aimed the conduction of an exploratory survey in order to obtain information about ownership and the use of machinery systems in rowcrop farms that use no tillage and are located in southern region of Brazil. A questionnaire was organized in order to collect data related to the farm, production system, management, labor resources and farm machinery. Stratified sampling was used considering the farm sizes and interviews were conduced using the questionnaire for obtaining the data. The results show that average yields where higher than national values and a small variation was observed between yield and crop species among farm. A large amount of the labor used in farms often operates farm machinery but receives little training to operate the equipments. Data related to 645 tractors were collected and its average age was 10.4 years with an annual use of 726 hours. Three kinds of machinery used for the crop implantation were found, planters for summer crops, grain drills for winter crops and multiples planters which are used to both crops seasons. The most common dosing mechanism for seed for summer crops was the horizontal disk plate with a participation of 81.3% followed by the pneumatic devices with 16.3%. Average power by row varied according to the crop. Sprayers were the equipment with the smaller average age, 7.3 years. Boom sprayers, trailed models, with 2000 L tanks and 18 m boom width dominate. Only 24% of the spraying equipment had cabins. For the combines the average annual use was 381 hours and older equipment was found in the smaller area. There were positive relations among the efficacy in the machinery use and farm size. The farmers are in charge of the purchase and machinery use but a technician is required for the assistance of the other resources such as herbicides and fertilizers. The interviewed farmers attributed good scores to the management of their productive units and judged the strategy of increasing profitability as more valuable way instead of increasing the farm area.

ASSUNTO(S)

mecanização agrícola - eficiência cost efficiency propriedade rural custo econômico plantio direto no-tillage index grãos

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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