Abstract

MANZANO-AGUGLIARO, Francisco  and  GARCIA-CRUZ, Amos. Time study techniques applied to labor management in greenhouse tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) cultivation. Agrociencia [online]. 2009, vol.43, n.3, pp.267-277. ISSN 2521-9766.

In greenhouse crops, labor is a key factor for the development and indeed the maintenance of the sector, since it represents approximately 50 % of the regular expenses in a typical operation. In addition, a decrease in performance of the workforce causes an increase in its need. In this work, a study about the main greenhouse crop, tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), was carried out for long cycle cultivation and branch harvest. Thirty terminals were located which would provide service to 356 sectors of an 11.5 ha greenhouse located in the province of Almería, Spain, which would register all the movements of each operator in each task to be carried out in the cultivation of tomato, for each sector of the greenhouse and during three agricultural cycles (2002 to 2005). We worked with 23 different tasks and nearly 50 different workers. With the registry of times obtained for each task, the average and standard times were obtained, as well as the needs for labor for each task; therefore, the results obtained can be extrapolated to operations with the same crop and the same technological level by simply taking into account the start of the cultivation cycle. This way, the needs for labor could be predicted beforehand in function of the size of the operation. The generic piece of data obtained for labor for the cultivation of 1 ha of tomato was two workers and 8 h of daily effective work during the cultivation cycle and with a supplement of one worker for half a day during the intervals of maximum workforce needs (weeks 12 and 18 to 20).

Keywords : Solanum lycopersicum L.; task; standard time; yield.