Wife just bought a 7 rai plot of land in Muang Buriram.

Currently, it's all rice field that sits right outside of a small moo and 15 minutes to the center of the city.

In 15 years when I (we) retire from the USA, we'll move there and build our main house and have a little hobby garden & pond with this 7 rai parcel.

 

The question comes up in what do we do with this land for the time-being? It's about an hour away from her family's village so it's too far them to use. Do we:

- Allow the neighbors to farm the land? Both the previous owner and the independent sales agent (and probably next door neighbors) said they'd work something out with us (pay us some money for use of the land, or what my wife seems to prefer is just X bags of rice that we can give to her parents for their personal use each harvest)

- Allow it become completely fallow?

 

I think the answer may reside in the middle somewhere - allow it to farmed for rice for 5-7 years, then 5 or so years let it be fallow/grow cover crop, then a few years before we move we can figure out the final plan for the land.

 

Any thoughts from those (possibly) older and (definitely) wiser than I?

My wife let the next door farmer use her land.

It would be a waste to leave it fallow for 15 years.

Lease the land for 10 years with 1 year extensions after that. You've probably already got plans for what you want to do with the land.

 

 

yearly new extensions.

Better off letting someone use the land, it will be taxed at a different rate if nothing is planted on it, probably not a lot higher, but if you don't use it after one rainy season it will turn into a jungle,

You gotta rent it, else someone will claim it using 'squatters rights' laws.

You already got some good answers. Let others plant rice. Contract can be annual = is flexible. You should get a minor land tax reduction. Avoids people encroaching on your land. You'll not have to remove truckloads of jungle when you want to build your house. And this brings me to the big question. Normally you're not allowed to build on farmland. Are you allowed on yours?

Bags of rice IS the normal payment. just saying your wife is correct.

Thanks for all the feedback. I wouldn't have assumed it would go to jungle, haha.

 

We'll do a one year contract with the previous owner for next year and see how it goes.

Regarding building on it later, the land is chanote and I could throw a rock and hit the moo baan, so I don't see the problem with building. It already has electricity and water. Maybe I'll need a permit and get local building approval, but don't see that as an issue.

For me it would depend on whether it's rain fed rice paddy or you have the ability to irrigate.

If can irrigate i would go with the rice split with the farmer.

If not i would rent out at a minimum of 1000 baht/rai.

If you can find someone willing to rent long term and pay up front the money could go to errecting a boundary fence.

In five years a vacant piece of land near me has become so overgrown with self sown trees that some are already 3 metres tall and the bushy undergrowth is do dense that it needs a brushcutter just to walk through it. Think what can happen in 15 years. 

Al least plant some fruit trees, their shade will stifle a lot of unwanted growth.

i would launch a soil restoration effort.  Improve fertility for the time when you will need it.  Renting it out for further exploitive chemical farming and soil degradation will get you just that, degraded soil and increasingly poor plant productivity, chemical dependence, and susceptibility to drought, pests and diseases when you move in.  

 

Cover crop it repeatedly during rainy seasons. Photosynthate root exudates, including glomalin production from mixed species covers, minimal tillage and crop residue recyling, will build aggregate soil structure that sequesters carbon and provides fertility, productivity, nutrient cycling, plant pest and disease resistance, drought resistance, and other benefits for your future home gardening and farming. 

 

See discussion in this forum for information resources on the science and practices of "regenerative farming" . Kiss The Ground, Soil Food Web School, Advancing Eco Agriculture and others, books, websites and YouTube. 

Another thing you can do is to allow grazing of the land, which can help improve fertility and keeps the weeds down. We have a nearby absentee owner who lends his land out to a small buffalo herd.