12 INNOVATIVE AGRICULTURE
CLAAS QUADRANT 4200 and CLAAS Tractor baling sugar cane leaves at Lopburi, Thailand.
Baling sugar cane leaves Fuelling power plants, reducing air pollution with the CLAAS QUADRANT Kruewan Thong-om and Lukas Viebrock It is undeniable that agricultural burning is a major contributor to the air pollution problem in Thailand. Yet farmers options to collect crop residue are limited. With this problem in mind, CLAAS QUADRANT offers farmers the oppor tunity to bale sugar cane leaves and other agricultural waste instead of burning them. Ever y year around November, a sudden increase in air pollution levels can be seen all over Thailand, especially in Bangkok. At the same time, the har vesting season of sugar cane begins – a timing that is not a coincidence. It has long been common practice to burn sugar cane fields before the harvest to allow faster cutting by hand once the sharp leaves had been burned off. As the process of manual harvesting can take a long time, and burning can make it faster. However, the degree Brix and weight can decrease drastically within 48 hours. Rising mechanization with sugar cane harvesters already requires less pre-harvest burning; however, the leaves are still left on
UPDATE 2/2021
the field as waste material after the harvest. The fields need to be cleared quickly to start the next cropping cycle, and thus burning has often been the first choice; the result is heavy air pollution. Although often referred to as sugar cane trash, the agricultural residue is valuable fuel for power plants to generate green energy. Here, with its QUADRANT square baler, CLAAS offers a practical solution to allowing easier and faster collection of sugar cane leaves. This serves two key purposes – fulfilling the material demand of e power plants while clearing the fields for the next crop. Sugar cane field burning in Thailand.
