RICE RATOONING - IRRI books - International Rice Research Institute

20 RICE RATOONING• short duration, providing the possibility for growing another crop in thesame cropping year; and• freeing up resources (power, labor, cash) for other uses.The economic disadvantages include:• uneven maturity, which makes harvest difficult and expensive; and• uneven grain quality, with possibly a lower market value, and generally lowand uncertain yields.The ratio of advantages and disadvantages helps determine whether or notratooning is an economically viable proposition.Ratoon vs seeded rice cropThe cost of a full duration rice crop and that of a hypothetical ratoon rice crop (wehave no field data on purposefully managed ratoons) are compared in Table 1. Datafor the full duration rice crop is from Central Luzon, Philippines. In this example,ratooning may save up to 60% of the labor used and most of the power, largelybecause land preparation and transplanting are avoided with ratooning. Of course,labor savings and costs would have been less if the rice crop was direct seeded, apractice gaining popularity in South and Southeast Asia as the real cost of herbicidesfalls. Irrigation costs are not included in this example because they are fixed perseason, independent of the quantity of water supplied and the crop duration.However, where a farmer has to pay actual pumping costs for water, savings with aratoon crop could be substantial; 50% less irrigation water may be used by a ratoonthan by a full duration rice crop (8).Assuming all inputs are valued at their market price, the full cost of ratooningwas $96/ ha, 70% less than the cost of a full duration rice crop. This saving isconsistent with other estimates (10).Such rules of thumb must, of course, be used with caution. Savings willdepend on the cost of land preparation and crop establishment in proportion to totalcosts, in addition to differences in costs of levels of managed inputs (e.g. fertilizer)between the main crop and the ratoon crop.Where farmers have no alternative use for their labor and power, they may notconsider it realistic to value their own resources at hired rates. In this case, thecash-cost comparison of a newly transplanted crop and a ratoon rice crop may be themore appropriate comparison from the farmer’s viewpoint. The cash cost and fullcost of transplanted and ratoon rice crops are compared in the last two rows of Table1. In this example, savings on a cash-cost basis was $199, because the farmer rentedthe tractor used for land preparation.Break-even yieldsA recurring concern in the rice ratoon literature is the uncertainty of the ratoon cropyield. One way to address this problem is to determine the “break-even” ratoon cropyield which would be necessary to make this crop competitive with a full durationrice crop. In principle, if the reduction in benefits from a ratoon crop (i.e. yielddifference by price) is less than the added cost of producing a second rice crop, thenratooning appears to be a profitable option.