Rice Harvesting Machine For The Small Farmer. Is There Such A Thing & Is It Economical?

[rockyysdt]

I've been experiencing working as a rice farm labourer lately, having to harvest/cut rice deep in Isaan territory.

I've learned that rice farmers have a limited time in which to harvest once the rice reaches maturity.

One obstacle is that the rice plants dry out quickly and fall over making harvesting much more difficult.

Also if heavy rain should come the rice can be ruined.

The farmer, battling against time, finds himself needing to hire labourers to assist with the harvest.

The cutting and laying out of the rice ears in this region appears to be done by hand using a small scythe.

This is followed by tieing off rice ears into bundles and placing them into a machine which removes stalks and debris leaving the rice bagged for transport.

It appears small rice farmers pay the owner of such a machine to assist with their harvest as their for small scale farming is not economical.

I'm stumped to know why they also don't utilise machinery to cut the rice.

Manual scything of the rice is back breaking work and takes many manhours to accomplish.

Is such machinery available and is it cost effective against cheap labour?

Could an owner of such equipment turn it into a good earner?

[soundman]

Sorry, the link is in Thai, they haven't up-graded the English part of the website.

Not exactly sure this is what you had in mind & I don't really know much about rice farming equipment.

http://www.siamkubota.co.th/th/product_det...id=55&cid=5

Cheers.

[Maizefarmer]

The margins for small rice farmers are very tight - that alone means that for most, ownership of a mechanical harvester is beyond their means.

Secondly, the complexity of the machines means that they are expensive to produce and maintain - in turn that means for owners a certain amount of income per unit area needed to justify using them, and for the small rice farmer, the question is working out which is cheaper - manual harvetsing by hand, or mechancal harvesting. In many cases, small rice farmers will loose their profit hiring in a mechancal harvester. Where poss the rope in as many family members as possible.

There are a few ex-pats on this forum who have experiance running and owning mechanical rice harvesters, and they will tell you that over and above a never-ending-game of having to calculate whetaher a particualr job is worth undertaking, they are also constantly been played off against other harvester owners i.e. they quote x amount for a certain area of rai, only for the farmer to say yes, but then come back later and say they have found another owner who will do it for x - whatever. The other problem is trying to co-ordinate various jobs - as everyone always wants to have their rice cut at roughly the same time.

So - is it cost effective to use manual labour? In many cases yes, it is.

Is it worth buying a machine (as an ex-pat) to own and rent out? Good question - best people to speak to are the ex-pats who do own them: making a living out of it is not straight forward, that is sure - transport, driver, accom, maintenance (is constant and gets higher and higher as the machine gets older), deciding which jobs to do and which not to do, establishing relationships with farmers and the seasonality of the work all "conspire" to make it a lot of hard work with limited return.

Dont rush into it.

[dingdongrb]

My father in law is a rice farmer in Surin providence. Up until last year he has always hired workers to come and manually cut his rice. Last year he used one of the rice harvesters mentioned. I don't know the exact cost but asking my wife she seems to remember that it was something like 500 baht per rai to have the harvester cut the rice. As mentioned the harvester is quicker than manual labor. But two downfalls to the harvester. The first is that you have to have it scheduled where as mentioned most rice farmers tend to cut rice around the same time so if the harvester is booked up you would have to rely on manual labor. Secondly, which happened to my father in law, there was about 10 rai of his rice that needed cut but the owner of the harvester refused to cut it. The reason was there was standing water and much mud within those paddies and the harvester owner was concerned with getting stuck.

[Disting]

Used Combine to do our land this year. Went and saw our 7 rai patch being done. They were using a brand new Kubota DC60. 850000 from your local dealer. 3 guys needed to run it. 1 driver and 2 baggers at the back. medium sized machine so it fit well into small paddies. Our 7 Rai patch is 6 fields. They started at 3 and were done by 7. 550Baht a Rai. Very impressive machine. Extremely manoeverable so it didnt miss any. I went down just after it had passed and checked the ground and there was very little rice on the floor and also when it was spread out to dry it was very clean rice, not full of bits. Must say that our rice was standing up, not fallen over which makes it more difficult to use a combine.

[pnustedt]

These Chinese produced Kubota machines are the best small harvester produced and are probably just right for the rice farmer who wants to harvest his rice and contract out excess capacity. They are vulnerable in poor conditions, such as an uneven paddy, where the short rubber tracks mean the gatherer is bucking up and down, or on deep water, where rice is lying. Kubota claim that their capacity is 40 rai/day but the owners I have talked to claim that max. is about 20/day but falls below 10 in poor conditions, ave. is about 12-15 rai/day. I have also done comparative yield tests with the Kubota versus my Generlli machines, and they are not as good. You can buy a Kubota for Bt200K down and Bt200k/year. In my calculation you would be working for Kubota for the next 5 yrs with no return if you opted for this arrangement.

There does seem to be a problem for farmers this year that harvesters from other provinces did not come to southern Isaan and some that do have little understanding of rice farming and just want to race across your land to collect as much baht as they can collect.

I own two fairly new Generlli harvesters which harvest at a normal rate of 5 rai/hour manned by rice farmers. They have never got stuck in mud that they couldn't get out of (I charge Bt2K a time to pull Kubotas out), have so much demand that I cannot keep up with and need to buy more next year, only prob. is that they cost more than Bt2mill each but which puts them out of reach of local startups.

[Disting]

I heard the going rate for a stuck combine to be pulled out by a backhoe was 4000. nice little earner with all these very wet paddies this year

[rockyysdt]

These Chinese produced Kubota machines are the best small harvester produced and are probably just right for the rice farmer who wants to harvest his rice and contract out excess capacity. .. You can buy a Kubota for Bt200K down and Bt200k/year. In my calculation you would be working for Kubota for the next 5 yrs with no return if you opted for this arrangement.

Are they Bt1mill outright?

I wonder if future models will improve performance whilst continuing to drop in price?

Sales would boom once an economical point was reached.

I own two fairly new Generlli harvesters which harvest at a normal rate of 5 rai/hour manned by rice farmers. They have never got stuck in mud that they couldn't get out of (I charge Bt2K a time to pull Kubotas out), have so much demand that I cannot keep up with and need to buy more next year, only prob. is that they cost more than Bt2mill each but which puts them out of reach of local startups.

Sounds a quality machine.

Is it suitable for small blocks?

At Bt2mill it must take years before breaking even.

Just a thought.

Owners of such machines must be hated by local labourers.

[Gary A]

My wife wouldn't consider a rice harvester. She says that you simply can't schedule the harvester when needed. She says they normally harvest when the rice is too wet or worse when it is too dry and they then lose too much rice. It would be different if you actually owned the machine in which case, you would need a very large farm.

[pnustedt]

Is it suitable for small blocks?

At Bt2mill it must take years before breaking even.

Just a thought.

Owners of such machines must be hated by local labourers.

They are very manouverable, able to turn on their own radius, and good on small plots.

This year I am double shifting one of the machines (24/7), the other is working 18 hr days, I reckon that they can pay for themselves in 3 years this way. My original plan was 5 yrs on 12 hr days.

One of my difficulties is getting the local labour, they have to work pretty hard and in an organised manner if they want to work for me, but the pay is good (in their terms).

[rockyysdt]

With the manual method, the hand cut rice ears are laid on the ground for one or more days allowing the rice to dry before machining and bagging.

How does the harvester method solve the drying issue?

[Disting]

Thats all the rice you see drying on the blue nets by the side of the road. Majority of that has come from combines

also for the post that says the local laborers must hate the machines, in my village, each year there is a shortage of people top work the fields. Very few young people want to do it and the oldies are getting less and less able each year, so the machines, although expensive at least mean you can get the rice in quickly.

[pab]

My father in law is a rice farmer in Surin providence. Up until last year he has always hired workers to come and manually cut his rice. Last year he used one of the rice harvesters mentioned. I don't know the exact cost but asking my wife she seems to remember that it was something like 500 baht per rai to have the harvester cut the rice. As mentioned the harvester is quicker than manual labor. But two downfalls to the harvester. The first is that you have to have it scheduled where as mentioned most rice farmers tend to cut rice around the same time so if the harvester is booked up you would have to rely on manual labor. Secondly, which happened to my father in law, there was about 10 rai of his rice that needed cut but the owner of the harvester refused to cut it. The reason was there was standing water and much mud within those paddies and the harvester owner was concerned with getting stuck.

We have 20 rai and for the first time this year we used a harvester as my wife's uncle purchased one a few months ago. We actually paid 600 baht/rai to the uncle but they did a great job and very fast compared to the usual manual harvesting approach. Similiar to dingdongrb we also had a few rai with standing water but the machine negotiated 90% of this leaving only about 1 rai for manual cutting. Its interesting to note that with this development, more than 80% of the rice harvest around our village was done by machine this year and most of this by my wife's uncle who is not just a good bloke but also a respected, hard but very fair businessman. Good luck to him. Now we are just waiting for the price to improve before selling.

[IsaanAussie]

Hi to all the Expats with Rice Cutter's Back,

I have just finished harvesting Hom Mali on our 12 rai and close to finishing the families 40 Rai. All cut by hand this year as we couldnt organise a harvester. I did try a DC600 but the loss rate was too high due to deep water and over-dry rice.

In terms of cost there was a significant advantage in using a harvester. At the local rate of 600 Baht per rai, our 12 rai would have cost 7,200 baht. The manual cutting cost was 10,000 baht, partly because of lodged rice conditions (60%).

In terms of quality of rice under this years conditions the advantage of manual cutting is vast, no dirt and little trash in the rice.

I tried using a brush cutter (3,500 baht) with a wire cage to cut standing rice. Very good result in windrowing the crop and very quick, but tiring as the machine is heavy.

I also looked at a bar mower, similar to two wheel cultivator, with a bundle tie feature in Sisaket which looked very interesting. It was priced at 97,000 baht. I have seen similar locally made units without the tie feature at around half the figure but no where near as robust.

Interested in the thoughts of others who have used this type of alternate cutting devices.

Isaanaussie

[Chaichara]

We have 10 rai of Kow Niaow here deep in Nong Bua Lamphu province, and own the the town rice mill.

I've never seen a machine used anywhere in the area, probably because each paddy is almost too small to do a U-turn, and possibly because most of the rice is subsistence farming anyway.

Harvesting is usually an extended-family affair plus some extra local hired help at 140 baht per day per person - I guess that's a bit cheaper than forking out several million for a combine harvester.