Cassava Harvesting

[DaveD]

Hi guys ,

Cassava harvest will come next year and ive read khonwans sticky about 18 month period ,I see that locals tend to harvest what they need (in terms of cash in th pocket) after 6 months.

How long does it take to get your cassava out of the ground? What methods used ? What amount of labour and trucks available?

Tonnes /rai per day?

I feel at a couple of rai per day some large growers might take weeks to harvest.

I understand that rainy weather is prefered for harvesting in that the ground is softer ,but i also hear that if it is too wet ,the starch content is lower and the factory wil pay a lower price??

Also some factories can only process so much per day and will restrict intake.

I hear also that a factory will refuse to take cassava from smaller growers ,while a favoured big farmer is delivering their harvest?

What about selling to the guys that have the huge concrete areas for drying?

At the factory gate i gather that Mr,thai farmer gets shafted ,stating that his tubers are too dirty/starch content to low?

Sorry for so many questions at one time ,akk replies are welcome and ill chip in where i can.

DD

[Khonwan]

Hi Dave

If you have enough vehicles and people, you can harvest your entire crop in one day quite easily; realistically, you’ll probably take much longer with fewer people.

Start planning the number of vehicles available to you, decide the weight of cassava these vehicles can transport (ask the owners/drivers if you don’t know), then decide how many trips to the concrete-slab-tapioca-processors they can make in a day (obviously depends on the distance). You can now calculate the total tonnage you are able to transport per day.

From my sticky, “To now harvest the tubers, use a tractor with a mouldboard plough attached to the 3-point hitch at the back (ผานขุดมัน pan kood man) to loosen the tubers from the soil. Do not expose more tubers than can be collected that day – the starch content rapidly reduces once the tubers are exposed. You will need one person per tonne per day to follow behind the tractor, haul the tubers out, separate them from the woody stem-base with a machete, and load them into your transport. The tubers should then immediately be transported to the processor. The processor shall weigh your loaded vehicle before and after unloading the tubers – you shall receive a ticket indicating both weights and the agreed price, and will probably have to come back after a couple of days (some times a week) to receive payment. “

Divide the total tonnage you can transport in one day and divide by 1 if your people are good workers, or perhaps 0.8 if they are not. That’s the number of people you need to hire, including the drivers, assuming the drivers are also harvesting. Remember, there is no particular problem (for me anyway) in taking weeks to harvest a large area if done in the dry season. Flooding the task with lots of labour seems to make sense, but I believe your workers productivity will suffer from the difficulty of overseeing perhaps a hundred people (resulting in extra cost and, therefore, less profit). My wife is our labour-overseer (great people management skills) – she prefers to work with a relatively small team of proven workers.

You are correct that the starch is lower in wet-season cassava than that harvested in the dry season and that it shall therefore command a lower price at the factory (though none of my local concrete-slab-tapioca-processors yet measure starch). A great many farmers (me included) harvest around February/March when the soil is very hard but harvesting around December is certainly easier. Most of my next harvest will be around December since I’m leaving most of the crop for 18 months.

I am quite a distance from our nearest factory and have never, yet, supplied them directly, but I consider what you say about them is correct from what I’ve been told locally, also that the time spent in queuing up can last several hours.

There is a method I know (though haven’t yet tried) to measure the starch yourself at your farm, fairly accurately – I’ll detail this later when I have time.

Rgds

Khonwan

[keg]

Khonwan,

Can you better decsribe the implement you use to pull the casava out of the ground or better yet put a picture of it up. I don't know what a moulder plow is. I have read your posts in the past about pulling them out of the ground with the tractor and asked my father in law why he doesn't do that and he said it dammages the casava too much, although I am not sure he has actually tried. They pull the bundles of tubers out of the ground manually with a hoe type implement using two people, which is back breaking work especially when the ground is dry. He has the tractor and all the implements to plow and make rows but not sure what it is you are using. He is in the Loei area and everyone around there seems to do it the same manual way so it sure would be nice to find a way to ease his workload some. He has about 60 or 70 rai in casava so a mechanical way to do this would certainly pay off come harvest time.

Thanks for you help and the info on casava farming.

Keg

[Issangeorge]

For those interested the price of cassava seems to be coming back, at least in my area. The plant 26 kms. east of Kalasin on Hwy. 213 posted 1.58 per kilo today, last Sunday it was 1.53 and the week before that 1.54, around the end of September and early October it was as low as 1.51, last June it was as high as 2.18. Issangeorge.

[Khonwan]

Hi Keg

I can’t imagine doing this task manually for an as large as 60 rai. Everyone in my area uses the plough, unless they only have a couple of rai. I’m very surprised to read that so many farmers in your area are still doing this. I understand the English name for the implement to be “mouldboard plough/plow” but I know it better by its Thai name, ผานขุดมัน (pan kood man). I believe it costs around 18,000 baht for a large one to fit a tractor like a Ford, cheaper for the small tractors. You will find photos of two examples (the larger one is mine, the smaller belongs to a neighbor) that I posted ages ago here: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/post-a51441-.html and http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/post-a51440-...hs-001.jpg.html (I had originally been incorrectly calling it a chisel plough).

Rgds

Khonwan

P.S. Issangeorge, thanks for the regular price updates from your area.

Edit: I should have added that the tubers may be slightly damaged (cut) by the plough (more so near the end of the dry season when the ground is very hard) but that this doesn’t matter since they are being taken same day to be chopped and dried – won’t affect the price (not in my area anyway).

Edited November 29, 2008 by Khonwan

[keg]

khonwan,

Thanks for the pictures. Is the plow modified for taking the tubers out or is that exactly how it is bought. He has a large Ford tractor so should be able to use a large plow.

Yes, as you can imagine it is quite a long process for him to harvest his crop. In addition to pulling the tubers out of the ground manually he chips and dries the tubers himself. He harvests enough to cover the area he has for drying then has to wait until they dry to harvest more tubers. He stores the bags of chipped and dried tubers at his house and either sells them to farmers or waits until he has enough to hire a truck and carry them to the factory. One other problem he has is not owning a truck to hall them to market himself. So you can see it is a several months long process for him to get the whole 60 or so rai done.

Thanks for the info.

Keg

[slapout]

I looked at the attached photos Khonwan noted and the device does appear kind of home make. It is not what we refer to as a moulboard plow. We used a device for tater harvest called a middle buster. It was 2 plow shears and 2 moulboards which were formed to throw soil in opposite direction from the conjunction of the 2 shears which attached to them. The plow shears are rectangle shaped, come to a point on front at the base. They are bead welded on point for wear. The good thing about this device was it worked in hard dry soil as well as wet, as the shear is set to desired depth and the curve of the moulboards throw and turn the soil, thus taters on top of ground.

[Khonwan]

Hi slapout

I think my neighbor did indeed make his own (the small one) but the large one was bought by me some 8/9 years ago (Bt13,000 I think) from a local metal work shop. The design is one of several, fairly similar, types available all around Nakhon Sawan and Kampaengphet (and elsewhere, I guess). You may well be correct about the English name – I’m not sure. My only farming experience has been that of farming in Thailand so I have really only learned the Thai names; the Thai name I provided is correct ( ผานขุดมัน - pan kood man).

Keg, this ผานขุดมัน (could someone provide the correct English name if not mouldboard plough?) is purchased 100% complete and ready to be attached to the 3-point hitch at the rear of the tractor. You will see that there is a semi-circular blade bolted to the plough: this wears down and has to be replaced. You buy what the Thai’s call a ผานขี้เมา (pan kee mao), then cut it in half (one half for use now, one for later use) and, with gas, cut bolt holes into it for attachment to the plough. Cut two rows of holes so that the blade can be moved forward when the first 2 or 3 inches of the blade has worn out. I’m sorry but I do not have the English vocabulary to describe many of these parts (despite being Scottish myself) for the reason explained above, and I have little knowledge of mechanics: the “pan kee mao” is the flat circular steel ‘guide wheel’ (for want of a better word) that is found on the 3-7 disc plough. Hope that helps, but tell me if it isn’t clear yet.

Rgds

Khonwan

Edited November 29, 2008 by Khonwan