Abstract

The determination of the cost of agricultural production is an important tool for controlling and managing productive activities and generating information to support decision-making. The objective of this work was to make technical and economic evaluations of three mechanized tomato harvesting systems for industrial processing through the study of times, movements and the determination of operational costs. The research was conducted during the year 2018 in the municipality of Morrinhos-GO. The productive and unproductive times were collected, and subsequently, an economic analysis of each one as well as the calculation of the internal rate of return according to the useful life of each system were performed. After the data collection and analysis, it was concluded that the productive and unproductive times were similar for the evaluated systems. Only the system formed by the harvester, tractor, hauling and bucket was different from the others in relation to the values in US$ h-1 and US$ ha-1. From the fourth year, the internal rate of return was positive for all systems evaluated.

Key words: Costs of production, times and motion study, Solanum lycopersicum.