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โครงการหนังสืออิเล็กทรอนิกส์ด้านการเกษตร เฉลิมพระเกียรติพระบาทสมเด็จพระเจ้าอยู่หัว

observed in rice grains brought approximately weight loss and higher marginal costs. Storing rice
in a house produced the highest moisture content of paddy grains with the lowest head rice
percentage. Moreover, farmers should avoid the use of coated woven sacks because they
produce a high moisture content, low head rice percentage, high broken rice percentage, and low
2AP level. However, when considering head rice percentage only, it was found that storing rice in
net bags had a high head rice percentage and a low 2AP level. Appropriate rice storage
conditions varied based on the types of barns and other storage locations used. The marginal
cost of storing rice in piles was higher than other storage patterns, while storing it in old feed
sacks delivered a lowest marginal cost and improved storage profits.
The first recommendation stemming from this research is that the operation of this
government project should be maintained continuously over the long term. In addition, the
benefits should be clearly calculated because farmers have to invest in standard barn building
and rice drying, which require many years to pay back. If there is no certainty in government
policy, the farmers will not take as many risks related to their investment.. The government
should take these issues into account, otherwise this project will only maintain a limited amount
of participating farmers and produce few benefits. The policy should also support small farmers
who cannot access benefits from this project by promoting small farmers to produce organic
Jasmine rice, among other strategies. This approach would help improve farm income and
maintain the quality standard of Thailand’s Jasmine rice. Moreover, labor saving technology
should be developed in order to reduce labor costs during the postharvest process, which is
necessary for addressing the labor shortage issue. This initiative should be pursued in conjunction
with barn quality improvement and the determination of rice storage that is appropriate for each
barn type. For quality management, organic rice should be promoted as a standard in order to
improve Jasmine rice quality. In addition, the development of technologies or machines to
produce Jasmine rice should take the impacts on quality into account. Moreover, improving the
physical condition of barns (related to leakage and sunlight protection) would help to maintain
the quality of Jasmine rice. However, farmers who store their rice in all types of storage locations
should avoid storing Jasmine rice in coated woven sacks because doing so lowered rice quality. In
addition, storing rice in galvanized barns also lowered the moisture content of Jasmine grains,
leading to higher storage costs. Most farmers store rice in piles and use fertilizer sacks, which are
not appropriate methods for maintaining rice quality. Consequently, farmers storing Jasmine rice
in all storage locations should use old animal feed sacks, which maintains a higher quality and
lowers the marginal costs of storage.

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