Rice is the major crop grown in 2/3rd of the cultivated area in Krishna district. Majority of the rice growing farmers go for mechanical harvesting of the crop (90.00%), out of which only 40.00 per cent farmers manually bail the rice straw and transport them for further use. While the remaining 60.00 per cent burn the straw in the field itself due to its non-bailing quality due to mechanical harvesting and also due to increased labour, transport costs, unavoidable climatic conditions. Such burning of on farm waste not only kills the soil microbes but promotes environmental pollution adding to the release of greenhouse gases. Further resulting in increased demand for rice straw for milch animals. Through demonstrations in farmers fields it was recorded that the cost of bailing with rice straw baler was Rs.2500/ha and for manual bailing it was Rs.3500/ha. The time taken for machine bailing was 2.5 hour/ha while manual bailing took 20 hours/ha i.e., three working days. Positive perception and acceptability of the technology is a pre-requisite to pave way to adoption. In a survey conducted among 200 farmers in the demonstrated area, found that the demonstrations made a significant impact on the perception of the farmers towards rice straw baler in a positive direction paving way for acceptability of the technology. Key words: Rice straw baler; Residue management; Open field burning; Perception;

Keyword: rice growing farmers, farm residue, management, greenhouse gases