Burning Behavior and Management of Agricultural Residue After Harvesting of Farmers in Chainart and Suphanburi Province

Abstract

This research is focused on the study of burning behavior and management of agricultural residue
after harvesting of farmers in Chainart and Suphanburi Province, the study is including analysis the
factors influencing behavior of burning agricultural residuals. The methodology is to study by
interviewing 400 farmers in both provinces. Data was analyzed by Chi-square test method with the
comparison to the specified factors, the results were as follows.
The majority farmers are male and the age between 31-50 year olds with the compulsory education
level. Most of them have income less than 100,000 Baht per household per year with the 1-20 years
experiences of agricultural works. They usually use only households’ labor force and the size of farm
land of 1-20 Rai (1600 m2 equal to 1 Rai) with the cash crop of sugar cane, rice, maize, tapioca, and
sweet potato respectively and all the yields are gone to the factories (processing, rice-mill). Most of
the farmers burn their residuals after harvesting, due to the easiest method of eliminate all the
residuals. They believe that burning will help easier tillage, land preparation and eliminate weeds.
They do not how to make utilization of such residuals. So they burn it. Incase of utilization of
residuals without burning, some of them use the residuals for fermented soil conditioner; some used it
as animal feeds, soil covering, sold it, and as fuel respectively. Factors influencing behavior in
burning the residual after harvesting are age, income from agriculture activity and type of crops.