Rice Crop Profitability

[IsaanAussie]

 

Chickpeas growing here in Sisaket right now!

[kickstart]

22 hours ago, IsaanAussie said:

 

Chickpeas growing here in Sisaket right now!

Thanks for that ,can you get Pigeon Pea  or Cow pea where you are ,another good legume plant ,and putting on your other hat ,it will make very good hay or silage ,could well make baled silage ,would it work in a crop rotation ?say 2 years of pea ,then back too rice , selling your hay /silage you could make more money than growing rice ,you could get two cuts a year .

Problem would be getting  a rice field prepared  for another  crops ,so your other crop would not get waterlogged when the rains come.   

[IsaanAussie]

9 hours ago, kickstart said:

Thanks for that ,can you get Pigeon Pea  or Cow pea where you are ,another good legume plant ,and putting on your other hat ,it will make very good hay or silage ,could well make baled silage ,would it work in a crop rotation ?say 2 years of pea ,then back too rice , selling your hay /silage you could make more money than growing rice ,you could get two cuts a year .

Problem would be getting  a rice field prepared  for another  crops ,so your other crop would not get waterlogged when the rains come.   

KS the chick pea seed apparently came from Greece in this case. I think I can get pigeon peas here. But as you say the challenge is in raising the levels of the ground or digging drains into new ponds. Because of the expense of major earthworks I want to be sure I can get ground water during the dry season first. 

 

[kickstart]

I think you said your land was mainly clay ?would a good subsoiler do any good ,a single leg going down 18-24 inches with narrow row spacings ,could help prevent some waterlogging.

I have thought about a mole plough ,that could work with water flowing in to a pond, would work in clay soil 

But,as the field has been rice for a long time ,and rice fields are designed to keep water in, not easy again to switch crops .

Our neighbour is growing some maize on his rice fields ,one crop has cobs on ,I think it will be sold for maize silage,his other crop is  about knee hight ,the klong, stream he has been sucking water from has all but dry up,that crop will be ploughed in or cut for cattle feed.  

[IsaanAussie]

15 hours ago, kickstart said:

But,as the field has been rice for a long time ,and rice fields are designed to keep water in, not easy again to switch crops .

And I want to keep that water inside the boundary. What I need to achieve is a system something like the Japanese use to drain and flood the land as required. The land use proportions that Rama 9 developed would work, 30% rice, 30% other crops, 30% ponds and 10% general use (trees, access etc..). The block is a "L" shape and currently divided into a 5, 4 and 3 rai paddies. The 5 rai paddy has a 1/2 rai pond already. Other ponds will be added with the spoils used to elevate parts of the paddies. The target being to be able to rotate the 60% cropping area for any combination of rice or other stuff. 

All sounds simple but designing it for machinery access complicates things. Add planning the ponds to minimise evaporation losses, moving water between ponds and using pond or ground water for irrigation and you start to see my dilemma. Then of course add the brilliant exchange rates and economic situation at the moment and having broken a leg a month back and you see that things have slowed here somewhat. 

[kickstart]

On 2/19/2020 at 9:18 PM, kickstart said:

Photos I took today ,these fields have been mone cropped with rice for a good few years ,this is a crop of Mung Beans ,sown about the new year ,the odds of the owner getting a crop is slim ,no rain and the imminent  hot season on its way ,but I think he is not to bothered ,he will plough it all in as a green manure .

You can see the seed bed is not good ,he used either a Ford and a 7 disc plough and seeder or a little  Hino and 5 disc plus seeded straight in to the rice stubble ,either way the input was not that much ,a total of about 20 rie ,this is the second, ,third time he has done this ,over the past 4 years ,the land is not heavy ,and mung beans do not need a lot of water .

Might not be easy  to do on very  light Issan soil ,but even there if it is only a poor crop ,it will still provide some soil improvement .

Up date,to my surprise he did get a crop and got 23 baht/kg got the combine in to harvest the crop ,better than when we  grew mung beans  and picked them by hand .Note he is only ploughing in the residue 6 inches if that in places ,most of the soil nutrients  will still be available for the next crop ,unlike Somchai and his Ford ploughing every thing in a foot deep.

This crop had no rain at all ,we had 71 mm 8 days ago ,but that was to late to do any good, a shower of rain and you could drill in to this land .

If this was my land ,I would be tempted to do an FJ ,and plant some sesame seed ,I think it would be a gamble ,past rainfall records show no proper rain for another month at least ,if I toss a coin who will call it ,drill or not to drill ,that is the question .   

[kickstart]

Been watching this field for a while now  very near me, a crop of peanuts, he will harvest this crop about the end of month, and then he will plant some rice.

It has only had about 100 mm of rain since planting, he did water it last week, but that will it.

Peanuts being a legume will put some nutrients back in to the soil, another crop that could be grown on rice fields, before or after a rice crop and put some life back in to the soil.

The local cattle will be licking they lip's, the plants will we used as cattle feed a change for them from rice straw.