| Abstract | Losses due to inefficiency and low milling recovery have
wasted a large amount of energy to be used in paddy production, that is, less amount of paddy will be required to mill into the same amount of white rice provided that more efficient machine is installed. Moreover, due to the fact that the by-products are retained. as a milling fee by small millers. They can reap excess profits by overmilling the paddy. There is a progressive decrease in the nutrient content of the different~ layers of rice, as the centre of kernel is approached. Therefore, farmers who use the service of these small rice mills get less in terms of nutrients, as well as low qua1ity of milled rice in return. Another problem is that, the quality of by-products, a mostly bran, extracted by this milling process cannot meet the standard requirement of bran oil processing factories.
How to substitute the obsolete machine by the newly
innovated machine? The disc cono which has been used the most widely in Thailand, as well as, the stone roller which was produced later in the 70's, are now still far from favorable and acceptable standard. The latter machine is technically inefficient, if paddy is not well graded. the addition of paddy grading equipment is not possible because each customer comes with small amount of paddy. The same type of stone is used for both husking and whitening. As a result, more broken are produced. there are two possible ways that can be the alternatives to overcome the problem, whether 1) innovate more efficient machine of the same size and capacity that millers can afford to substitute of 2) encourage to use higher level of technology of the mill at increasing size and capacity of machine by installing more efficient machine to reap the benefit of the economy of scale, on the assumption that the higher level of technology as well as the larger size, the more efficient the mill can operate. Eventually, the number of small mills in operation will decrease by going larger size, or existing small mills become more efficient by employing newly innovated machine.
Cautions must be taken, when there is a necessity to shift the processing technique from lower to higher level. As each technique employs roughly double the number of workers of the next most capital-intensive technique. When hand-pounding is fading away of at different processing techniques, public policy should be geared towards massive programmes to create additional income opportunities for the rural disadvantaged. The private and the Government sector should work along side and thinking more of the disadvantaged. So that, modernization with development can go on. |