A survey of farmers' views on energy conservation and alternative energy sources for greenhouse heating and the conditions required for introduction of these technologies

We performed a survey to clarify farmers' views on energy conservation and the use of alternative energy sources for greenhouse heating as well as the conditions required for the introduction of these technologies. The results obtained are summarized below. 1. Farmers find the high cost of fuel to be a burden, and almost 30% of them were forced to lower the heating temperature at night. 2. Farmers adopt low-cost energy-saving measures such as careful maintenance of heaters and keeping greenhouses airtight. They hope to introduce more expensive measures such as multiple layer covering, circulating fans and thicker greenhouse film in the future. 3. Farmers, especially those who already have large fields or who are attempting to expand the scale of their concern, are most interested in energy conservation and alternative energy sources. 4. The most common energy conservation measures and alternative energy sources, i.e. those already developed for other industries, were those which farmers knew of or were interested in. These techniques included bio fuel, wood fuel, solar heating and waste oil. 5. Most farmers viewed the reduction of heating costs as a driving motivation for the introduction of energy conservation measures and alternative energy sources. Low-cost heating devices need to be developed which are capable of recovering the initial cost from the difference in cost compared with traditional heavy oil heaters within three to five years.