Equipment Performance, Costs and Constraints of Packaging and Transporting Rice Straw for Alternative Uses to Burning in the “Parc Natural l’Albufera de València” (Spain)

Rice straw is a residue that causes significant environmental problems, as burning it causes CO2 and ash emissions, while buried waste can cause issues associated with eutrophication. The extraction of straw from fields for alternative uses may contribute to solving these problems, but research into its economic viability is necessary. The straw can be used for crop mulching, biofuel, bedding for livestock, and so on. In this study, we analyse the work carried out by straw harvesting machines (rakes, balers, bundlers, and loaders) and calculate the costs of packing, road-siding, and transportation of the straw from the rice fields to stockage points in the producer area, as well as to locations outside of the rice production area, in order to assess the viability. The costs of all elemental operations were calculated. The costs of all the operations included between raking and unloading in the producer area stocking point ranged between 28.1 and 51 EUR t−1. These costs were compared with the price of rain-fed cereal straw (wheat and barley), which is the most abundant, noting that the years in which rain-fed cereal straw reached high prices, rice straw could serve as a competitive product; however, in years when the former is cheap, it would be necessary to subsidise the harvesting of rice straw.