ความคิดเห็นของผู้ประกอบการโคนมในพื้นที่ภาคเหนือ ตอนบนต่อการเข้าสู่มาตรฐานฟาร์ม

Abstract

The objective of this independent study was to obtain the opinions of dairy cattle farm owners in upper northern part of Thailand towards decision to join Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and to gather information for the staff of the 5th Regional Livestock Office in order to encourage fairy farm owners in the upper northern part to join Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). The data was collected from 350 dairy farm owners in the ares. The samples were divided proportionally. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics, namely frequency, percentage, mean, T-test, and One-way ANOVA. It was found from the research that most questionnaire respondents had already joined Good Agricultural Practices. Most were married men, 41-50 years old with primary school education or lower. Most had been in dairy farm business for 5-10 years. Most started their own farms which were medium in size (20-100 cattle). The amount of raw milk they produced was 101-300 kilograms per day. They had 1-3 employees working in the farm. Their income was 50,000-100,000 baht per month. Their expenses were less than 50,000 baht per month. Their source of financial loans was Dairy Farm Cooperative. Of the 350 samples, 184 farms had joined Good Agricultural Practices, for 3-6 years. The first 3 reasons they joined Good Agricultural Practices were they got additional pay for raw milk from the centre, the cattle was in good health with no diseases, and the farm was more systematic in operation, respectively. The capital for the improvement to join Good Agricultural Practices was less than 100,000 baht. As for the farms that had not yet joined Good Agricultural Practices, their first 3 reasons for not joining were the capital needed for improvement of the farm was high, there was a problem with inappropriate farming areas, and the Livestock Office had complicated assessment process, respectively. They needed less than 100,000 baht in order to join Good Agricultural Practices. The overall opinions of the respondents towards Good Agricultural Practices was at the “agree” level. In details, the opinions were at the “highly agree” level towards the following factors: raw milk production, and water used in the farm. Their opinions were at the “agree” level for the following factors: cattle food, farm structure, environment, animal health, farm management, and information recording, respectively. The average mean of the difference in their opinions was at the statistical significance of 0.05, according to the differences in their farm status and farm size. The overall response to Good Agricultural Practices was a positive one. The respondents saw that they needed to upgrade their farms to the standard so that their cattle would be more healthy and yield more raw milk with better quality. The respondents’ opinions towards the operation of Livestock Office was that the process was too complicated and slow; this had to be improved. There was a shortage of veterinarians at the farms. Livestock Office should provide more veterinarians at the centre so that they could help farm owners with knowledge about dairy farm operation, animal food, environment management, animal health management, and treatment and disease control. Farm owners who had not joined Good Agricultural Practices had problem with capital to improve their farms. If they could find financial sources with low interest rate, more farm owners would join Good Agricultural Practices.