Avaliação ergonômica da colheita manual e semimecanizada da mandioca no noroeste do Paraná

Abstract

Historically, cassava cultivation predominantly uses manual labor for its complete culture, both in family agriculture and with medium and large-scale producers that mostly use a semi-mechanized crop. One of the most exhausting stages of this crop is the crop that, because it is a tuberous plant, requires a lot of effort from the worker in the various stages of the process that are usually performed with the curved dorsal trunk. The objective of this study was to improve the health of workers in the semi-mechanized manual cassava harvest and for this, ergonomics knowledge was applied in each of the harvest stages. The methodology was as follows: initially, a data collection was conducted with interviews with two medium-sized cassava producers living in the northwest of Paraná. The harvest was subdivided into 4 activities: Start manual root, root root after blender, dismember root and load buckets with clean root. Each activity presented movement with standard and cyclic body positions that were cataloged and analyzed applied to the OWAS system to determine its degree of seriousness. Another analysis was the determination of the recommended load limit used by the NIOSH method. The data were compiled using the Ergôlandia 6.0 software. The results pointed to severe postural problems due to the high degree of trunk inclination of most stages. The recommended load limit of 7.5 kg was also found to be critical because extraction of the tool-free soil root can easily exceed this value multiple times and therefore manual harvesting is much more detrimental than semi-mechanized harvesting. It was also concluded that it is necessary to implement immediate changes in the work routine as more breaks during the day, even in semi-mechanized harvesting. It is also necessary the investment of the producer that makes the manual harvest in tools that assist in the withdrawal of the plant of the ground.