Cost-Economic Evaluation of Leafy Vegetable Harvester versus Conventional Harvesting: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The process of harvesting green vegetables is labor-intensive and costly, demanding a substantial workforce. To address the challenges associated with manual harvesting, mechanization is essential for reducing costs, saving time, and improving worker comfort. By precise and comprehensive evaluations of ownership and operational expenses, farmers can acquire valuable information. This knowledge empowers them to make well-informed decisions about purchasing new machinery, optimizing existing equipment, or even exploring alternative methods to enhance their farm's productivity and financial outcomes. Therefore, a battery-operated leafy vegetable harvester is compared with manual harvesting in terms of cost economics. The present results reveal that the ownership and operating costs of the developed harvester are 76.86 Rs/h and 83.702 Rs/h. Compared to traditional methods, it saves an impressive 85.71% of the time and reduces costs by 54.12% during harvesting. The study determined that using battery-operated leafy vegetable harvesters is not only more cost-effective than manual harvesting but also environmentally friendly when compared to fuel-operated harvesting methods.