Daily income per worker in the erva-mate harvest

Abstract

The aim of this work was to evaluate the average daily yield of the yerba mate harvesting activity per employee in cultivated and non-cultivated herbs. Initially, the herb stores in the region were asked to cut their employees' controls with individual productivity records (kg/man/day) in the last months. With these data, considered 'pilot sample', the mean and standard deviation were calculated according to the type of herb (cultivated and not cultivated), determining the minimum number of employees to be evaluated. Workers from 11 main herbaceous plants in the West and Midwest of Santa Catarina were sampled. By availability at the time of evaluations, 46 and 44 employees were evaluated in the non-cultivated and cultivated systems, respectively. With 95% confidence, it was estimated that the average yield sampled has a maximum error of 6.36% and 4.05% for non-cultivated and cultivated herbs, respectively. The average pruning yield of 734. 5kg man^-1 day^-1 for cultivated herbs was significantly higher compared to non-cultivated, 535.8kg man^-1 day^-1.