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 opportunity to bale sugar cane leaves and other agricultural waste instead of burning them.

Every year around November, a sudden increase in air pollution levels can be seen all over Thailand, especially in Bangkok. At the same time, the harvesting 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.

Sugar cane field burning in Thailand.

Rising mechanization with sugar cane harvesters already requires less pre-harvest burning; however, the leaves are still left on 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.

CLAAS Network in South-East Asia.

“Power plants can sustainably source material locally, farmers can earn additional income from selling the sugar cane straw and, above all, heavy air pollution caused by field burning can be avoided – it is a win-win situation for everyone”, explains Mr. Jan-Klaus Tobias, Managing Director of the CLAAS Regional Center South-East Asia.

Sometime ago, Asia’s biggest sugar and bio-energy producer bought six CLAAS QUADRANT 4200 square baler as an attempt to realize the goals set by the “Stop Burning” national programme in Thailand. The CLAAS QUADRANT has proved to be particularly efficient and reliable, which is why word of the CLAAS QUADRANT had spread rapidly throughout the agricultural industry. Farmers and contractors saw the benefits and have since made use of the QUADRANT. This has made the CLAAS QUADRANT square baler the most popular choice for baling biomass in tough conditions all over Thailand.

Evolution of the CLAAS QUADRANT square baler

In 1988, CLAAS introduced its first large square baler, the QUADRANT 1200, designed specifically for larger farms and contractors. It had a capacity of 30 tonnes of straw per hour, and produced straw bales of up to 360 kg in weight, with bale dimensions that corresponded exactly to the usual transport measurements in the European market.

Eight years later, in 1996 CLAAS launched the QUADRANT 2200 in the market. With a completely new powertrain, new baler frame construction and the ultra-convenient CLAAS Control Terminal, it promoted even higher worker/hour profitability ratios for contracting operations.

Currently, CLAAS provides three models of the QUADRANT. The QUADRANT 4200 can be viewed as the entry model with a bale size of 1.2 x 0.7 metres, while the QUADRANT 5200 and 5300 come with a bale size of 1.20 x 0.90 metres.

About CLAAS:

CLAAS (www.claas-group.com) is a family business that was founded in 1913 and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of agricultural engineering equipment. The company, with corporate headquarters in Harsewinkel, Germany, is the European market leader in combine harvesters. CLAAS is also the world leader in another large product group, self-propelled forage harvesters. CLAAS is also a top performer in world-wide agricultural engineering with tractors, agricultural balers and green harvesting machinery. The CLAAS product portfolio also includes state-of-the-art farming information technology. CLAAS employs around 11,395 workers worldwide and reported a turnover of 4.04 billion euros in the 2020 financial year.

Contact details: Kruewan Thongom Market Research and Marketing Manager CLAAS Regional Center South-East Asia Ltd. Tel: +66 2 726 9667, ext.115 Fax: +66 2 726 9669 www.claas.com (English), www.claas.co.th (Thai)