ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF THE USE OF TRACTOR/AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS FOR BUILDING TERRACES

Resumo

The objective of this work was to analyze the operational costs of agricultural mechanization in the construction of terraces as well as its purchase economic feasibility. This experiment was conducted in the city of Montes Claros, Minas Gerais. It evaluated the operating costs considering the availability of implanting three terraces: Manghum, Nichols and Wide Base terraces. A three-fixed-disc plow was adopted for the Manghum type, a three-reversible-disc plow was used for the Nichols type and a drag-plow was used for the Wide Base. Even with higher hourly-costs (R$ h-1), the drag-plow provided a lower total cost (R$ terrace-1) and consequently more terraces were built per hour due to its higher efficiency. The Leveling Point has shown that for the Manghum terrace, to purchase the tractor and the fixed disc plow is feasible if the number of worked-hours exceeds 219.3 hours per year; for the Nichols terrace type, to purchase the tractor and the reversible disc plow is only possible when the number of hours is higher than 247.7 hours per year and, for the Wide Base terrace, to purchase the tractor and the drag-plow is viable with a number of hours exceeding 167.8 hours per y