**5.1 Development of the result of the transformation procedure from the remaining rice stubble as wood substitute material**

Development of the requirements of rice stubble were studied in the communities of the North-eastern region of Thailand. This could promote the lifestyle of the people in the communities to gain more opportunities from earning income with the increasing valuable furniture products, including increasing the opportunity to burn the rice stubble that affected the overall environment in the country. However, this was based on the problem-solving method and the management from the high quantity of rice stubble in each season. Normally, the agriculturists would always manage to do this through three methods: 1. To let the rice stubble decompose naturally, 2. burn the rice stubble, and 3. till the rice stubble into the ground [13]. Similarly, these three methods may have different effects on the agriculturists and society according to the selection of the guidelines for removing the rice stubble in the next season prior to cultivating the rice (**Figure 2**).

This research process aimed at applying the benefits of the rice stubble in terms of developing manufactured products easily without the complexity of the production procedure. Similarly, this also promoted the people in the communities in a positive way they reduced rice stubble burning in the rice fields in the dry season by creating the good well-being of the people in the future. Consequently, this could

**Figure 2.** *Agriculturists cultivate rice in the dry season of north-eastern areas of Thailand.*

*The Creation of Furniture Products from Rice Stubble DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98739*

increase quality environmental conditions and boost the effective economy and other fields.

Hence, overall, this would generate integrated development in the system and sustainability for the communities based on the potential of the people; namely, lifestyle, environment, and economy. Additionally, this was considered as sustainable development based on the input factors that caused the alteration and output factor to represent the early successful result, intermediate successful result, and final successful result.

Therefore, this would take place from people in the model communities who were participating in the study by applying the problem-solving methods to stimulate the alteration sustainably and continuously (**Table 2**).

**Table 3** presented the requirements to bring the rice stubble in the agriculturists own cultivation areas to be applied to the transformation process. The group sampling had the requirement to increase the value in the transformation for handicraft products that had the most level of requirement (mean = 4.530; S.D. = 0.559), followed by the transformation to be agricultural products that had an excellent level of requirement (mean = 4.100; S.D. = 0.541), the tilling or implantation had an excellent level of requirement (mean = 3.560; S.D. = 0.729), and burning had a moderate level of requirement (mean = 2.990; S.D. = 1.159). Therefore, overall, this showed that the community groups had the requirement of the feeling to bring the rice stubble to be applied as a new method more than the original one; namely, tilling or burning. In fact, these two methods caused direct effects to the agriculturists, except for having the requirement to increase the rice stubble more than in

#### **Table 2.**

*Creating the direction of the method for rice stubble furniture products in rice cultivation in the north-eastern region.*


**Table 3.**

*Opinions of agriculturists affected by bringing the rice stubble to apply to the transformation process, (n = 100).*

the past. Thus, the researcher brought the requirement result from the community groups prior to applying with the transformation procedure of the rice stubble fiber.

From **Table 4**, the two-tailed test for the significance value found that the value F = 0.000 showed the mean of at least one pair with a level of significance of .05 by using multiple comparison. As such, there were four method patterns that used the statistical test of Fisher's least significant difference (LSD) to make a comparison between the differences of the mean with the pairs. Similarly, according to the test result, it was found that every compared pair had the value Sig. in the test with the least significance of .05, and these four methods could be applied with the opinions of the agriculturist community groups with a level of significance of .05.

Most of the agriculturist groups had similar opinions to the stimulation trend for bringing the rice stubble to apply with the transformation. Likewise, this could generate higher economic value with a positive image to the income after applying it in beneficial ways.

The rice farmer group had the requirement to bring the rice stubble in their cultivation area to do an activity in an agricultural way; such as, planting mushrooms or making fertilizer. Then, these farmers had few requirements due to the less economic incentives for applying with the transformation than doing in other ways. As such, this was affected by the price of agricultural crops in the areas which existed to have low crop prices, so the farmers group did not have the incentive for being interested in the use of rice stubble in agricultural crops. Additionally, in the tilling process, it showed that the farmers in the research area would not bring the materials to apply with the transformation because this would result in the increasing of rats living in the rice fields leading to an epidemic of leptospirosis disease for the local areas [14, 15]. Significantly, normally the agriculturists, especially the rice farmers did not plow the rice stubble but considered the rice stubble burning process as the popular method because it could quickly eradicate rats that lived in the rice fields, so the farmers could do agriculture in the next round on the rice fields. Therefore, burning was an agricultural method that was extensively used in Thailand; unfortunately, in the year 2020, the country was faced with air pollution problems in the form of dust particles or PM 2.5 until it affected the health of the people in the North, Northeast, and Central areas. Hence, this was a health problem that created a health disparity among the general population until it became a national problem that all people had to work together to reduce the impact. Furthermore, nowadays, most farmers have not burned the rice stubble since the beginning of the year 2020 until now. This presented the causes and effects combined with the global trend for conserving the environment. Then, it could initiate the ideas of the development process for making use of rice stubble that required a simple process without any complications, and this enabled needy farmers in Thailand to apply these newly developed processes to meet their own need, including adding value to the economy as a form of income generated from rice. As a result, this could use products made from rice stubble in the form of wood substitute


#### **Table 4.**

*Analysis of the differences for the four method variables.*

material and furniture made from rice stubble to create opportunities for increasing the income of farmers in the local countryside as another way, including helping bridge the social gap in Thailand.
