An Economic Evaluation of Post-Harvest Technology: The Case of Rice and Corn Drying in the Philippines

摘要

Using the data obtained in rice and corn villages in the Philippines, actual farmers' practices in post-harvest grain drying in rice and corn production are examined and compared to the economic performance of mechanical dryers. Grain drying by farmers is popular in the case of corn, but rare in the case of rice. We find a positive income effect on grain drying in that the higher the household income, the more farmers practice drying operation. Farmers' method of grain drying is unanimously manual solar-drying, and none adopts mechanical dryer. The rate of return to solar-drying operation is high. In contrast, the rate of return to the best machine dryer available in the country is so low that no farmer adopts it under the present conditions. Although steady increases in the wage rate undermine the relative superiority of manual solar-drying over mechanical drying, the latter will remain as the major drying method in the near future. The largest obstacle to the adoption of mechanical dryer by farmers is its low fuel efficiency in the heating system for drying. If grain drying by mechanical dryer is to be promoted, serious efforts must be made to improve this efficiency.