การลดต้นทุนในการผลิตข้าวโพดเลี้ยงสัตว์ของเกษตรกร ในจังหวัดแพร่

Abstract

This research aims to study farm activities of maize production, investigate production cost and seek for solution on cost reduction in each activity. Maize cultivated land in Phrae province was used as the study area. Field data, including farm locations and production activities, were corrected from maize growers in May to September of 2013. Farmers who have cultivated land in big patches of maize zones in the study area were selected as sampling data with the aid of geographic information technology. Activities on every step maize production performed by growers were categorized, examined and carefully analyzed. Production cost analysis was conducted using Activity-Based Costing (ABC) and Value Stream Analysis approaches incorporated with actual data from field, knowledge from agricultural scientists and the surveyed data on production cost during the study period. The results show that farm activities of maize production for the early rainy season (May to September, 2013) were summarized into seven major activities and further classified into 19 sub-activities. The major included (1) production input preparation, (2) land preparation, (3) cultivation, (4) crop management and cultural practice, (5) harvesting (6) postharvest and (7) transportation of maize to the market. Total cost of maize production in this study was approximately 2,452.53 Baht per rai (1 rai = 0.16 ha) or 3.77 Baht per kilogram. The cultivation activity was found to generate the highest cost category at 47.42% (1,162.90 Baht per rai). The costs of the cultural practice and the harvesting activities were approximately 27.40% (672.07 Baht per rai) and 17.67% (433.32 Baht per rai) of the total production cost, respectively. The fist approach to reduce production cost of maize was to limit seeding rate to 2.5 kilogram per rai (as recommended by crop scientist). In addition, adjusting the use of chemical fertilizer to the rate determined by nutrient requirement (the difference between soil fertility and crop requirement) was also suggested. As a result, it reduced the cost of fertilizing and cultural practice activity from 1,162.90 to 689.42 Baht per rai. To reduce production cost from harvesting activity, farmers were recommended to use labor rather instead of harvesting machine. By doing so, the harvesting cost would drop from 433.32 to 408.75 Baht per rai. By applying these three approaches of cost reduction, the total maize production cost would drop to 1,851.95 Baht per rai or 2.85 Baht per kilogram.