Lamyai Farming

[JR Texas]

JR; do not know where your farm is located,but you should be able to hire a caretaker/day labor type for 3 to 4000/baht/month. he would keep grass and weeds cut, water when needed, apply fertilizer, and pesticide and you pay for expendables. This does require guidence but this seems to work in the Northern part of the country, especially if you have a small shelter where they can live. There are some honest people out there, even though at times we all wonder where they are hiding. Thai labor need a income to live each month so a proposal to work for a persentage of crops is tough, they could rent land themselves if that was of intrest to them. If your manager is getting toyou on expendables just wait until harvest time and you should expect all kinds of reasons for low harvest weights, wind storm, bats ate fruit, neighbors stole crop etc

Thanks Slapout.............the fact is that I have been in Thailand for two decades. I just hate liars and cheats......that makes it hard to live here sometimes (ha ha ha). I know what the manager is probably doing........just needs extra income.........but he needs to tell me the truth instead of a bunch of half truths. Anyway, life goes on. This will either be great or it will go down in flames. For now, it looks like the flowers will be on the trees in late November........some rich people will drop by and look at the orchard and assess its value.......we will sell, hopefully for a good price.

Good luck to all!

[JR Texas]

JR; do not know where your farm is located,but you should be able to hire a caretaker/day labor type for 3 to 4000/baht/month. he would keep grass and weeds cut, water when needed, apply fertilizer, and pesticide and you pay for expendables. This does require guidence but this seems to work in the Northern part of the country, especially if you have a small shelter where they can live. There are some honest people out there, even though at times we all wonder where they are hiding. Thai labor need a income to live each month so a proposal to work for a persentage of crops is tough, they could rent land themselves if that was of intrest to them. If your manager is getting toyou on expendables just wait until harvest time and you should expect all kinds of reasons for low harvest weights, wind storm, bats ate fruit, neighbors stole crop etc

I am confused about the price for lamyai that many of you are quoting. I am also wondering if some of you are confusing lamyai with longon (that happens a lot).

I am renting a lamyai orchard in southern Thailand near the Cambodian border in the province of Chantaburi (not too far from Koh Chang).

The orchard is at the base of a mountain near Pong Nam Ron. The land is extremely fertile and the weather is cool for Thailand. A river is adjacent to the orchard so I don’t pay for water.

In this region lamyai sells for the following prices (current):

Big: 40,000 baht per ton (40 baht per kg)

Small: 30,000 baht per ton (30 baht per kg)

Very small: 25,000 baht per ton (25 baht per kg)

One month ago the “big” lamyai was selling for 35,000 per ton……so they price has gone up, not down.

My lamyai orchard has 78 very large trees on it, about three times the size of the tree in the picture on this thread. The trees are purported to produce 400-600 kg per tree.

At 400 kg per tree, that works out to 31.2 tons: 780,000 baht at the very small estimate.

Some of you have stated that you can’t make money farming. 780,000 baht is a lot of money considering that I have only put about 119,000 baht in it, and a big chunk of that was for pipes (next year that expense will not be there).

I can tell you with certainty that there are lots of rich Thais living in this region that are making lots of money farming lamyai and mansaparang and other things. Yes, most people don’t make money, but some people do.

Maybe I am living in a dream world………maybe this will all work out…….maybe it will all go up in flames. I will let you know when the time comes.

For now I am simply having trouble trusting my farm manager—basically I just want him to tell me the truth and keep good records.