Marginal and media productivity of labor on table grape harvest

Abstract

In recent years in San Juan, Argentina the lack of manpower to harvest, clean and packing export table grape caused serious economic problems and it is the most important reason that explains the disappearance of Argentina in this area. Labor is very expensive and it is the highest production cost. Also it is unknown in Argentina whether it is convenient hiring labor or not. In the other hand the efficient used of labor is disregarded and buying hard technology in replacement of labor is very difficult in table grape production. The objective of this study is to measure the mean and marginal labor productivity during harvesting, packing and to describe the process. A sectional study was carry out with 144 interviews in seven districts in San Juan. The harvesting and cleaning time was measured and the number of table grape boxes done in a certain period of time too. We observed each harvesting and packing group made up of one to four people and that when the number of workers per group increased, the number of boxes per worker per hour had reduced from 4 to 1 resulting in a negative marginal productivity. Up to 20% of the effective working time a day was lost due to failures in the work organization.