Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to learn about the cultivation of mint and mint oil processing in order to be able to analyse the cost of production of mint and mint oil, the result of which will be used in solving the problems of the production and marketing channels of mint products. From the result of study and survey, it was found that the local supplies of mint oil and menthol are still not sufficient for domestic uses. Thus Thailand has to import large quantity of such product annually. Since local prices mint oil and menthol depend on world market price, when the price is high, the manufacturers of mint oil and menthol in Thailand earn a good profit, but once the price is low, most of the farmers who mint, the owners of mint oil factories and the manufacturers of menthol make a loss, because the costs of production for mint oil and menthol are higher than their selling prices. The close of mint oil factories would, of course, directly affect the farmers who grow mint. From the result of analysis of cost of mint oil production in Nan Province, the author learns that the important reason which makes the cost of production very high is that the factories reduce their productions because of price decrease which in turn increases the factory overhead per unit. At the same time, the factories have to buy raw material or mint from the farmers who produce mint at a rather high cost with low percentage of mint oil. Futhermore, the process of production is uneconomical. The farmers, on the other hand, have insufficient knowledge in cultivating mint, so the yield per rai is lower than normal. Thus, the method in solving the problems of cultivation of mint is to provide sufficient knowledge to the farmers and educate them in the use of fertilizer in order to increase the yield. The suitable size of area for growing mint should be the size that the farmers can look after and take care of them. As for mint oil factories, their production policy should be changed, that is, they should encourage the farmers to grow mint seriously. Planning and coordination between factories and farmers are required in order to get good quality mint plant sufficient quantity to feed the factories. Regarding the process of production, the factories should study and apply new technology so that cost of production could be reduced. If mint growing promotion and economical process of production can be effected, the author believes that both the farmers and the mint oil factories will have good prospects in the future.