Economic Aspects of Rice Combine Harvesting Service for Farmer in Northeast Thailand

Rice combine harvesting is popular among farmers due to a labor shortage and high wage labor. This condition impacts on the rapid expansion of business of rice combine harvester service. The objective of this research was to evaluate the service characteristics of rice combine harvester for farmer and factor affecting the use of combine harvester. Primary data was collected purposively 85 operators and randomly 729 farmers with statistic analysis. Results of the study indicated that the harvesting cost of 798.48 THB/rai for using a combine harvester in wet season is smaller than the cost of manual harvesting of 1,542.17 THB/rai. The important factors affecting the use of combine harvest were farmers’ education, farm size and family size. Net return from this service business is over 250 THB/rai or over 35 % of total profit that it is economic benefit for operators. But, the operators faced high cost of fuel and of repair and maintenance cost due to unskilled operation. Thus, the government should establish a network of harvester service operators as well as encourage more maintenance training for local operator in order to high utilization efficiency in rice combine harvester. Also, the government should support farmer to expand their farm sizes by the establishment of a group farmer to easy access the use of rice combine harvester and should give wider farmer awareness education for higher adoption of combine harvester use.