Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Basically, technological progress has a positive infl uence on changes in
the unit productivity of four operations. Improvement of unit productivity
in mechanized harvesting is less than that in the other operations.
Structural adjustments to the machinery number caused an increase
in the unit productivity of mechanized tillage, mechanized sowing and
mechanized harvesting. Moreover, it also enables the unit productivity
of the mechanized irrigation to decrease gradually with average rated
power.
7.4.4 CHANGES OF WORKING HOURS
Table 4 shows the average annual working hours of agricultural ma-
chinery. Almost all average annual working hours of the agricultural
machinery show a decreasing trend from 1996 to 2010, except for
harvesters.
• The average annual working hours of the tractors declined from 56.33 h in
1996 to 41.00 h in 2010, an average annual decline of 2.24%.
• The average annual working hours of the harvesters increased from 87.19 h
to 105.65 h, an average annual increase of 1.38%.
• The average annual working hours of the irrigation machinery declined
from 217.24 h to 109.06 h, an average annual decline of 4.80%.
• The average annual working hours of the other machinery declined from
165.70 h to 114.43 h, an average annual decline of 2.74%.
Figure 8 shows the changes in annual average working hours com-
pared with that in the previous year. The changes in average annual work-
ing hours could be caused by changes in actual workloads and changes in
the unit productivity. In Figure 8, they are indicated by the red part and the
blue part, respectively.
There is no doubt that an increase in unit productivity leads to a reduc-
tion in working hours. This is the case for all kinds of agricultural machin-
ery. However, its effect is negligible compared with the effect caused by
changes of actual workloads.
