Sugar cane farmer: Burning is necessary - Go ahead "jail us all!"

[legend49]

He said he is seriously considering abandoning sugar cane, a crop he has grown in the province for 30 years before the sugar mills even came. 

 

That wont work he belongs to a nation of talkers and no action.

[Cake Monster]

Then do it ! Jail the lot of them for attempted Murder

Arrogant Sods

[hotchilli]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

He said he faced going to jail for years and the punishment would be worse than being accused of theft

In so many ways it is worse than theft.

Sheer arrogance of the man.

[zyphodb]

6 hours ago, dyertribe said:

you will note that the cane is burnt before it's harvested (see the image) and it's to clear out the matted lower growth (and snakes).  It is not to burn the residue.

 

This is not necessary when it's machine harvested, but when cut by hand it is ...

 

The solution ... create a pool of harvesters that can be cheaply hired by the farmers and find new jobs for the cane cutters.

Far too logical for this country, plus who's gonna pay for it?

   the gov. certainly won't, no profit for them...

[orchidfan]

5 hours ago, billd766 said:

A simple way of maintaining the equipment would be to send to each area a group of Army/Navy/Air Force mechanical engineers to keep the cane harvesters online. It should keep the harvesters working and also provide hands on training for when the leave the military.

Harvesting here is only over a few short months....as is the milling operation.

In the case of the mills, the remaining 9 odd months of the year are spent on servicing and repairs.

Same could be done with harvesters.

 

One of Thailand's biggest sugar producers has huge cane fields and mills in Australia.

All leveled dead flat,  all mechanically harvested by GPS machines,  and run by 2 or 3 men.

NO burning done there in the last 50 years .

[Burma Bill]

Quote:-

"lose 30-40% of their income if they are forced to pay workers to cut down old stems"

Am I missing something here? They burn the cane to remove the leaves so that the stems (cane) can then be cut by workers for stacking on lorries maximizing space for cane without leaves and profit! There are no "old stems" left that have to be burnt.

 

[Bassosa]

6 hours ago, Farangwithaplan said:

Ummm, but by smoking weed they were creating air pollution, too. They should stay there.

 

Look the guy might be ignorant to the greater issue of safe, clean air. But the guy and many like him just don't have the margins in geowing a crop where he gets screwed by the mills on price year after year. There should be a pro active solution by the government. They should give up on treating the effects with portable scrubbers and the like and get to the heart of the matter.

 

The Government need to develop a plan to assist these farmers in either cutting through the undergrowth economically or they need to assist them in moving to a new crop which isn't reliant on burning or manual / mechanical removal of undergrowth.

 

 

On a tangent, I once spoke to an electrical contractor who ran cables through the barriers of a walk bridge. By doing so, it menat people using the walk bridge would need to avoid the wires. I asked him why he did it, knowing that it would cause issues. He advised me that another contractor was meant to have moved the pole so it didn't cause the cables to foul on the bridge. The pole contractor didn't do his job properly.

 

So this contractor claimed he had no recourse. If he didn't install the cables, he wouldn't get paid, may have been in default and needed to pay. He also wouldn't have received future work. He claimed he had no way of advising that the pole was in the wrong location and therefore could not complete his job properly. I'm not sure if he was telling the whole truth, but there is certainly a disconnect. I asked a concretor once about a similar issue and I got a similar result.

 

I don't blame the farmer in this instance. I blame the government for letting the situation get to this state.

Why does the government need to come to the farmer's rescue? Why the special treatment?

Do other Thai businesses get this special treatment? 
 

[URMySunshine]

5 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

About 10 million baht.

Could be interesting to make a cost-benefit comparison vs. manual harvesting. 

Once you take in the hidden costs of all the masks,air purifiers , shut downs , lost tourism et al it is a no brainer on the side of action. 

[Redline]

7 hours ago, dyertribe said:

you will note that the cane is burnt before it's harvested (see the image) and it's to clear out the matted lower growth (and snakes).  It is not to burn the residue.

 

This is not necessary when it's machine harvested, but when cut by hand it is ...

 

The solution ... create a pool of harvesters that can be cheaply hired by the farmers and find new jobs for the cane cutters.

Have the government subsidize the equipment 

[Redline]

20 minutes ago, Bassosa said:

Why does the government need to come to the farmer's rescue? Why the special treatment?

Do other Thai businesses get this special treatment? 
 

They subsidize much of the farming anyway, but tourism and public health cost alone is huge 

[Redline]

47 minutes ago, orchidfan said:

Harvesting here is only over a few short months....as is the milling operation.

In the case of the mills, the remaining 9 odd months of the year are spent on servicing and repairs.

Same could be done with harvesters.

 

One of Thailand's biggest sugar producers has huge cane fields and mills in Australia.

All leveled dead flat,  all mechanically harvested by GPS machines,  and run by 2 or 3 men.

NO burning done there in the last 50 years .

Exactly 

[hlj]

this may have been said before, I will say it anyway. There are machinery which will cut the cane down with no burning. NO BURNING I would suggest the sugar cane farmers look into this option it is much better than spending time in jail, a big fine or both. Burning of sugar cane we can do without our health is much more valuable than your sugar cane. 

[CGW]

33 minutes ago, Bassosa said:

Why does the government need to come to the farmer's rescue? Why the special treatment?

Look at who owns the companies that make the real money from Sugar cane, it may give you a clue as to why the government is so keen to "rescue" farmers, that and they don't wont them protesting in Bangkok!

[Lacessit]

He has 1000 rai of land, and he is presenting himself as a victim?

[4MyEgo]

2 hours ago, ramrod711 said:

I wonder if Bamphen has any family members with respiratory problems? The children accompany their parents and breathe this junk into their lungs, but hey, that's life.

A Thai bloke up the road a few doors used to do his charcoal across the road on the temple's land by the river, in one of those hand made ovens, he would do it on a commercial scale, and his grandchild was going to hospital on a regular basis with respiratory problems, the smoke is toxic and everyone was coping it, especially his direct neighbours as we are a little down the road, that said, it started affecting us and that is when the Mrs flew into action rallying support from the neighbours to get him to stop it.

 

When she confronted him, everyones else backed down with my wife saying, she would go to the mayor, he said, up to you, he is my cousin, (true), wife went to the mayor and the mayor said, yes a few people have complained to him about it, he will look into it, the wife said, my husband is being affected by it and so are my kids, and he reiterated that he would look into it as something had to be down. I was thinking that was a brush off, then at 9.00pm that night as we pulled up at our gate, you could see a long streak of thick black smoke in the street, it was bad, and guess who was driving past right in the thick of it, yep the mayor, we thought nothing will come of it.

 

Next morning the mayor was there at the guys house watching him load his eucalyptus trees onto his wagon packing up shop and moving it out of town...lol, nice bloke the mayor is.

 

The neighbours a few days later told my wife that they were breathing better, and she said, if she knew they were going to back down, she would let them choke on it.

[billd766]

6 hours ago, Assurancetourix said:

Thai prisons are already packed;
almost 200,000 prisoners for a population of 68 million inhabitants; more than 80% of the Thai prisoners are there because of conveying and use of hard drugs;
they are almost irremediable, the first thing they do after leaving prison is to start again trafficking and consumption of these same drugs with often the key to many murders.

 

In France for an equivalent population there are only 70,000 prisoners.

 

The solution has been given several times on different posts in this forum and just above:
form cooperatives of suitable materials, mechanize the cutting so no need to burn the feet of the canes and also train maintenance staff for these materials And in the cooperatives we can add harvesters, devices to automatically plant rice, like this is done in Japan ..
So materials that will come out according to the needs of local farmers who will only have to pay the rental.
I see in my village farmers who have gone into debt up to their necks to buy these types of equipment that only work a few months a year; for rice it is even worse, the harvest generally lasts less than a month and for 11 months the harvester remains at rest.
The least expensive, the least sophisticated still costs the trifle of 1 million baht.

Just think how many the government could buy for the cost of one fairly useless submarine and equally, how much better that would be for the people of Thailand.

[billd766]

4 hours ago, saengd said:

The wife tells me there are now two prices for sugar cane offered by the government which includes a higher price where the cane has not been burned, seems like a good incentive to me. If that's true, what's this idiots problem!

Probably that it takes a longer time and a lot more people (that he will have to pay for) and the cost will come out of his pocket and profits.

[Youlike]

5 hours ago, newcomer71 said:

Exactly. And once the fire has been put off, show him the fat bill. As seen as to people like him, what does count is only the profit, hit him in the pocket. Next time he'll think twice.

Also give him the bill of all the air purifiers and mouthmasks we had to buy....

[KP67]

8 hours ago, Lloydyboy said:

It's not only Thailand that burns the sugar cane before harvesting, it happens in Florida too, see here>

https://civileats.com/2019/07/15/burning-sugarcane-in-florida-is-making-people-sick-could-green-harvesting-change-the-game/

This is common everywhere they grow sugar cane. Florida, Caribbean, Central America. Not saying it is the right way but it is how it is done, especially where the farmers are poor.   It is not just this one Thai farmer.  From what I have seen many Thai farmers live hand to mouth - what are they going to buy a cane harvester with ?

[DaRoadrunner]

9 hours ago, Bassosa said:

no one took responsibility

Ah, where have we heard this before. No responsibility.... The source of many problems in this country. To which we can add.... ignorance!

[rvaviator]

7 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

About 10 million baht.

Could be interesting to make a cost-benefit comparison vs. manual harvesting. 

I can not remember how much they are paying for the two submarines ... Maybe only buy one and get a few JD harvesters ???? ... I wonder if most of the workers which then will not be needed are local Thais or guest workers from Laos ...  In any case it would be better for everyone concerned if the government  pay them (the Thais) just to keep the streets clean (they could get some guidance from China in that respect ...)  The cost of pollution is just astronomical ...

[curlylekan]

9 hours ago, webfact said:

He said he faced going to jail for years and the punishment would be worse than being accused of theft

I do agree with him that punishments in Thailand usually do not suit the violation.

[Number 6]

I'm not anti sugar but the world does not need this crop especially if this is the cost. I bet we'd all be absolutely shocked at what a kg of processed natural cane sugar sells for at the commodity level. Not to mention the water involved. What about sugar beets?

 

What a fool

[chama]

Another issue that no one seems to be able to find a solution for so the policy is to ignore it and maybe it will go away. Short of that arresting a few offenders allows for a claim that effort is being made to stop the smog.

[matador007]

We need more people like this in Thailand, and the rest of the World.

 

 

[Sumarianson]

Let them find a use for the stalks that would allow someone to harvest them for free like making bags or something like that. Could they be used for thatch on barns or even houses? Shurely there must be a use for the product? However the burning has to be stopped. If arrests and large fines are the only way the so be it. If a 100,000 baht fine per burned acre is levied, I am sure it will have the desired effect. I am severley affected and am a prisoner in my own condo as I have emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. My child is also suffering. 

[emptypockets]

10 hours ago, Matzzon said:

This is a MF stupid moron, that needs to go to jail for a long time. Only his disrespectful attitude to the law and the iones upholding it should be enough to punish him.

There is perfectly good ways to take care of this problem, that many other countries are dealing very well with, so he can take his poor excuses an push up his MF big ar5e!

In the Burdekin area of Queensland 9 million tonnes of cane are burnt every year.

No major pollution problems there. Stop scapegoating the cane farmers and look at the real causes of pollution.

[emptypockets]

10 hours ago, unamazedloso said:

Hes a liar! A cane harvester can do the job and the left overs plowed right back.in the soil.

The problem is when the growth of the cane isnt good they chose to hand cut and pay pathetic poor locals because its cheaper than a harvester.

That said many new attatchments are available for all tractors that dont cost much at all but all local orbator places could organize a shared system but nobody cares.

This guy has 1000rai full of sugarcane. He aint poor! Thats fact!!

He is killing people, hes a polluter, send him to prison!! And all the rest of them for destroying the country, tourism, etc..

You are talking nonsense. The ' leftovers' are the sugar cane plant that will ratoon for up to five years and still be commercially viable. A farmer would be insane, and go broke quickly, following your advice. You haven't got a clue.

[Damrongsak]

11 hours ago, Lloydyboy said:

It's not only Thailand that burns the sugar cane before harvesting, it happens in Florida too, see here>

https://civileats.com/2019/07/15/burning-sugarcane-in-florida-is-making-people-sick-could-green-harvesting-change-the-game/

Out of curiosity I watched some videos of mechanized sugarcane harvesting (unburned), mostly in Louisiana, USA.  The poster "AerialAg" mentioned in one comment that the leftover chaff that was in the field was burned in place prior to the next planting.

[emptypockets]

8 hours ago, Sumarianson said:

Let them find a use for the stalks that would allow someone to harvest them for free like making bags or something like that. Could they be used for thatch on barns or even houses? Shurely there must be a use for the product? However the burning has to be stopped. If arrests and large fines are the only way the so be it. If a 100,000 baht fine per burned acre is levied, I am sure it will have the desired effect. I am severley affected and am a prisoner in my own condo as I have emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. My child is also suffering. 

The stalks ARE the product which produce sugar when processed.