IsaanAussie

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

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?

3 hours ago, Postharvesting said:

Why farmers buy 2nd hand harvesters or balers?

isn’t buying new equipment convenient as they can get retail finance support?

is there any retail finance support for buying old equipment ?

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.

Today was the first real run. I milled 3 bags of approx 40 kg of paddy and the harvester rubbish. The longest part was I had to run some through the screens 3 times to get all the grass, sticks and empty husks out. The actual milling step went really well.

From the 120Kg (approx):

52 Kg of rice - 32 kg clean unbroken rice, 13 kg of 50% broken , and 7kg of broken rice. The family wanted to dump the 50% in with the good stuff but it had a few seeds (smaller haystack to search).

57 Kg of rice bran, germ and husk. That has buyers already at 5 baht a kg. I might get a separate husker later but current thought is to use it as feed. 

For the maths guys, the harvester contributed about 10 kg of extra cleaning. That is a fact of life here and I am pleased to be able to get clean unbroken rice at all. I hate picking out seeds.

Well it has arrived and been setup. Run a half a bag of dry dirty rice through it. The first cleaning stage took the straw, empty husks etc out. It managed about 90% of the small seeds. A fair bit of broken rice which is to be expected in dry grains. More trials to figure it out but overall so far not bad, getting at least as good as the local millers are doing plus I get the broken rice and bran. Polish level looks OK.

Well I have just purchased a 5 in 1 rice mill on the inter-webs. What a leap of faith! 

Actually I have spent a <deleted> load of time looking at this issue. This machine allows you to preclean the paddy of junk via the multi screens before it goes through mill. The cyclone fan removes empty husk and straw. Smaller stones and other seeds removed by the screens.

Objective, mill nothing but paddy rice!

For those interested 

On 1/9/2022 at 11:53 AM, nycjoe said:

We plan to have and sell around 20 a month and have our own breeding pens. I will cut the amount of money coming from my pension to pay for the enterprise.

Can I ask if you have estimated the start up time and cost to achieve 20 market pigs target? Having been through this, I advise you to study how you will achieve this carefully. Happy to discuss.

I am finally going to buy a rice mill for the farm. Should have done it years ago when we kept pigs. Anyway hopefully someone will clue me in if I have choosen another recipe for disaster.  I like the small cyclone on the bran chute. But what do I know? Anyhow will go down to Buri Ram and check it out for 18,500 baht.

5 hours ago, BritTim said:

there have always been special conditions associated with applying for the Non O-A.

Correct, O-A visas are sourced via overseas Thai embassies and some consulates and granted under the Ministry of Foreign affairs. O visas (3 month) were also granted by MFO external to Thailand. The O visas and extensions are granted inside Thailand by the Ministry of Internal Affairs via the Immigration department. 

Note: For an O-A retirement visa you have to show 800K baht or foreign equivalent in a bank account but not necessarily in Thailand. That visa runs you 2 years before you need to extend it. Hence, before this pandemic etc, you could stay here without any funds deposited before you needed to satisfy the local deposits necessary to obtain an extension of stay based on your visa. 

Just now, jackdd said:

400/40k, as you posted yourself already in your OP.

Yes for extensions. Not for new visas?

Does anyone know what the health insurance requirements are? 

I am trying to sort out the health insurance requirements for my O-A retirement extension. Not unusual to find much conflicting information. I visited the Thai Embassy site in Australia (which is usually accurate). https://canberra.thaiembassy.org/visa-categories/

O-A was either retirement or marriage, retirement is still. Marriage visas are now only under O. 

The health insurance requirement for new Retirement Visas is now 3Million baht. For renewals up until Sept 1, 2022 it remains at 400K inpatient and 40k outpatient. This is from the longstay site. https://longstay.tgia.org/guidelineoa

Can anyone point me at the "official" information?

I think the current scheme is direct assistance to the farmers (up to 15 rai) not rice pledging. Could be wrong will ask the wife and advise if different.

Most butterflies lay eggs on a very limited number of plant species, often a few as one or two. Tracing the food source is a good way to identify which butterfly species the caterpillar is, or at least narrow the range. You can search the web for species based on the specific food plant is being attacked.

We have butterflies that are active all year, in higher numbers at times when food is more plentiful. Thai climate (Isaan at least) does not effect them as much as cooler climates.

Try any of these

For one liter (one quart) of natural caterpillar repellent, add a combination of the following:

• 1 teaspoon mild dish soap
• 1 tablespoon of any of the these (chopped): garlic cloves, onion, red pepper or ground chili

To extract the active compounds, you can either:

• blend the mixture and let it sit for 24 hours, then filter it (keep the juice, discard the pulp).
• or, boil the chopped plants for 30 minutes, let it sit and cool down. After that, strain out the spent plant materials, keeping the liquid preparation

On 9/6/2021 at 1:21 PM, fangless said:

 

 

Try this

Farming in Thailand Forum - ASEAN NOW

OK where to next to get to archived topics?

I would like to reference some posts that were removed when the Farming Forum was restarted around 2018. If possible to do this, then a few clues on how to find the archived posts would be helpful. Thanks.

Just now, djayz said:

+1

What are the alternatives? 

You have been around and contributed for years. Tell me what alternative you are looking for?

Is this forum still active? Good question. Format then name changes seem to have diminished interest from long term posters like me. Definitely a very slow traffic flow.