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Abstract

Timeliness costs, a time-related penalty decreasing the total revenue in crop production, are associated with risk and arise when an operation is performed at a non-optimal time or with non-optimal capacity of the equipment, affecting the quality or quantity of a crop or both. Quantification of timeliness costs are needed to determine the optimal machinery system. When harvesting forage the harvest capacity is influenced not only by the size of the machines used but also on harvest logistics like transport distances, availability of labour and how the work is arranged. A study of the machinery system for harvest of forage explored machinery, labour and timeliness costs in organic and conventional milk production systems. The harvest machinery consisted of a mower-conditioner, a forage wagon and a wheel loader loading the forage in bunker silos. The timeliness factors needed for the study were calculated by estimating the value of forage harvested at two different times. The change in nutrient quality at different harvest times was decided from field experiments and the economic value of the forage by making fodder plans. Timeliness costs were calculated using a model based on mixed integer programming, previously used to optimise the machinery system on a grain production farm. The study showed that for organic production timeliness costs were similar to labour costs and therefore important to consider. Timeliness costs were sensitive to changes with influence on the harvest capacity such as labour availability and transport distances. Harvesting forage using a forage harvester and only one worker resulted in doubled timeliness costs compared with when two people did the harvest work. Nevertheless, total machinery costs for harvesting increased by 8% in conventional and 19% in organic production, respectively. By prolonging the working day from 8 to 12 h timeliness costs were reduced by approximately 40%. For each kilometre increased transport distance the timeliness costs increased with 12 and 3 €/ha for organic and conventional production. For the organic production labour and machine costs increased with 4 and 7 €/ha and km respectively

Published in

Title: Tagungsband/Proceeding 15th 15. Arbeitswissenschaftliches Seminar/ 15th Seminar of Work Science

Conference

15. Arbeitswissenschaftliches Seminar/ 15th Seminar of Work Science

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/16913