IsaanAussie

I'm still around here in Sisaket but still absolute rubbish growing tomatoes. Can I suggest you check out "Gordon Tickle" on YouTube. He is a Pom in Chiang Rai with the greenest thumbs I know.

Depending on conditions (basically water level) either 700 or 800 baht/rai More reservoir discharge than rain. But yes this year has seen paddies very wet. Little wind but very sloppy conditions which meant lot of lodging. Times have changed. No real or iron buffalos ploughing any more. No DC60 bag filling machines let alone teams of hand cutters and thrashers mounted on clagged out light trucks. People here aren't traditional rice farmers any more, they are rice producers that minimise work and cost. The romance is disappearing

Two things now lodged in the our villager's brains. First forget small harvesters, too much mess with dirt and sticks picked up, and too high a loss rate. Two large harvesters did most of this area between them. producing a much cleaner paddy harvest. The second thing is, sell the crop straight off the harvester without moisture testing yielded better bottom line. The two big guys both ran large tip trucks that took the "damp" rice to be weighed and returned with the money. Farmer then paid for the harvest services. Quick and easy. From the weight/sale docket I saw, they were paying about 10.2 baht. We used pickup trucks to move bulk rice we would keep. That was then dried on blue nets and bagged. In total about 120 bags.

From a pond to rice paddy? Why not set up a syphon system from 4" plastic pipe?

Time will tell. We definitely need more rain so far we have had just enough to keep the surface moist-ish!

We got great weed treatment this year, no idea what it was, but still no weeds in the rice and no pre-emergent spray used. Could have had something to do with me telling the BIL I would not be paying for urea this year at these prices to grow weeds before we started. Also could be him realising how many weed seeds we have in last years crop when he got left to mill a few bags for the family.

Seems vaguely familiar label....... ???

Of course it is possible, this is Thailand. For the farmer, the question is what is the volume of rice needed and the price paid. We grow Hom Mali 105 (jasmine) and mill our rice on farm for family use and for retail sale. Anyone that wants me to grow another type of rice has only got to ask and stump up for the costs. Friends grow many different organic heritage types. Anything is possible if there is a market.

Water.........

The Ukraine supplies 30% of global exported wheat normally. Currently some 80% of the last crop is still in farm storage with no way to get it out of their ports. Food storage is an immediate problem that needs to be addressed. With no income to fund the new crop, the future is bleak. Here fertiliser will be limited by available finance. It has always been the same with poor farmers producing low yields. Average yield in our village has been as low as 200kg/rai. The best I have achieved was 550kg, this year we will probably be back with the pack.

It is a difficult thing to understand from a western "put food on the table" responsibility, here Kin Khaow, literally eat rice.

The days of making 50K in cash after all costs, and having a year of kitchen rice and next season seed are over. Now it is about producing as much rice as you need for a minimum cost. I suppose it remains what it always has been, subsistence farming.

I suppose my guy will want more this year. Been 200/rai for plough, and again for rotary hoe. Time to do some numbers.

WOW.... I had been praying for a miracle (government price control or Buddha). Likely to go higher as the season gets started?

WOW, look at the telephone number on this thing! Laser cut! Shows just how far things have come in the last 15-20 years. When I started looking for implements "hand painted" or stencilled was the normal for the best. I am feeling so old.

Hi KS, What sort of money for those units?

Can I suggest you do some research on the recent development of Thai farming from a local farmer perspective? Start with the reality of a nation upended in 1997 by the economic crisis when everything stopped. A time when over 70% of Thai people were regarded as subsistence farmers who had no income and paid no tax.

Interesting dialogue between you guys. I would suggest you bring this to the main Farming Forum to get a wider audience. I have been interested in balers here for twenty years. The first to appear here in Isaan were very secondhand small square balers that were imported by the container load from places like Australia. At the time Australia was moving to large rounds and the old ones were scrap metal. Fifteen years ago I could buy a "rebuilt" baler here in Sisaket for about 50K baht. Some were rebuilt using only the baling segment onto pickup chassis and used as static units to load manually from straw piles from the threshers. Currently the import tax laws have changed and secondhand implements are not favoured. Kubota assemble a category 1/2 baler here in Thailand which I believe will gain market share. The main change here is the fact that the harvesters leave windrowed straw which makes baling the straw a simple task. But as with all things the farmer here has little money to pay subcontractors, so it is extremely price sensitive. I have looked very closely at importing a baler to make small round bales. Plans on hold until the current global situation normalises.

Though we might restart the issue of organic foods. I was impressed by many of the pros and cons. I think Gary A's wife is right. Oh, yeah, almost forgot: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple? Why, finding half a worm in your apple, of course. Isaanaussie