Optimal farm plans for tractor capacity and analysis of tractor use in vegetable farms, Bursa province, Türkiye

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the optimal farm-size in order to maximize farm income and to investigate whether the tractors were used rationally or not in the Bursa province of Turkey. It was known that a lot of factors affect optimum farm-size, such as farm structure, technical specifications of the farm machines, land irrigation status, soil type, farm mechanization level in using farm machines efficiently or not. The main data for this study was collected through interviews from 183 farmers, selected by sampling of tractor-owner farmers in Bursa province. In the researcsh area, the tractors work about 362 hours in a year. The findings show that, the power of tractors in a unit area was 4.78 hp/ ha and one tractor works in approximately 11.72 hectares of farmland in the research area. The tractors are used for an average of 259 hours (71.54%) at the agricultural work 48 hours (13.26%)non-agricultural work and 55 hours (15.12%) for works of others. The required acreage was determined at 32.6 hectares for a tractor capacity under optimal farming conditions, taking consideration available production possibilities and resource restrictions, by using linear programming (LP) method. The findings also found that the farmers with larger than 21 hectares used their tractors rationally.