Planting What On 17 Rai Of Land?

[AsiaCheese]

A farang buddy of mine and his Thai gf are contemplating going into farming. The reason behind it: she says that the Thai government is "giving away" (= presumably to the tune of "long-time borrow") 17 rai of land in Korat, provided it is being put to use, or they'll take it back.

So, the issue at hand is: plant what on that piece of land? She was suggesting coconut palms, saying there's not much work involved. Personally, I don't think there's much to be fetched from coconuts (but then, I've never farmed either ). My first thoughts were: rubber trees, growing teak wood, or - in view of the growing popularity of E10 (gasohol) - something that lends itself to be turned into ethanol. The lady grew up in an Isaan rice field, so one can presume that she has some fundamentals regarding farming; my buddy would at best qualify as an absolute beginner.

Ideas, anyone?

[dave_boo]

I've just purchased 17 rai of land, with chanote-and only 15 000 THB/rai, some I'm going to follow this thread with curiousity. We've already decided to put corn on it; don't know if that is of any use to you, but I'm worried about all the people who are getting into casava farming (which they use for ethanol production) driving down the price of that crop.

I'm not a farming expert, although I grew up on a farm, so don't consider what I post as gospel. However, I do know there are several classes of farmland and it sounds like the land you're talking about is one with the fewest usage rights. I believe you can't build a house, sell or anything like that.

**edit**

In regards to my last paragraph; can you grow timber on non-chanote land? And, once again not being an expert, isn't it a LOT of work attempting to grow teak?

Edited April 5, 2009 by dave_boo

[Maizefarmer]

The success of any farming farming project will come down to a number of things:

1) Determination and hardwork (don't under estimate this if its to be financialy successfull)

2) Soil type & condition

3) Water, water, water and more water ...... and that is proberbly your biggest issue in the North and North East.

So - in deciding to take advantage of the offer, first ensure you are willing to put the work and time into it, and then in deciding what farm take a look at the soil type and condition (and a good indicator of whats viable is what others around you and in the area are farming) - and last but by no means least assess avalibility of water - not just at the time of viewing/deciding, but what the water situation is likely to be throughout the year (e.g. land that looks dry in the winter can swamp out completly in the rainy season, streams, canals and dams that look healthy in the rainy season are often bone dry in the dry season).

If you are going to have to rely on pumped water for irrigation, get to grips with calculations/cost of energy (diesel and/or electricity - ac power costs about 30% less over the long run than diesel - so where and when viable, ac should be your first source for energy - and better still, but not absolutely essential is 3phase versus single phase) to run the pump(s) for whatever type of crop you intend to grow (e.g. distance & height to move the water will be your primary ongoing irrigation cost - following the capital outlay for the pump/irrigation hardware).

In short, because the oppurtunity to farm presents its self, it should not be the determing factor in making the commitment - things will fast go pear shaped without a detailed study and understanding of the above factors been undertaken before hand.

However, the good thing about Korat is that it lends its self to a whole range of farming options - irrigation versus crop value/ potential yield is going to be your most important calculation. Sorry I'm going about this cost thing, but get this wrong and it'll throw the rest of the business plan into disarray..... and turn you off, what is potentialy in many cases a viable income for xpats in rural Thailand. If you want to make a financial success of it, treat your farming project as you would any other professional business project/committment. farming is no less a business than say, accoutancy, retail, engineering ect ect .......

Golden Rule (in the absense of previous experiance) - line 1, paragraph 1, chapter 1:

Start small - don't kick off the project by cultivating all 17 rai. Do, say 2 or 3 rai first to see how things go - get this up and running, understand the costs involved - and then give thought to expansion.

Potential crops are:

1) Vegetables - and if you have no experiance to date I would reccommend two things:

a)Start with an easy crop to cultivate - a good crop would be (not neccessarily offering the best return, but giving you a good experiance in what is involved time/work wise) first time round would be something like Makua (I wrote up a very detailed Makua growing plan/layout a couple years back on the forum - specificaly for conditions likely to be exprianced in the North and North East). Its an easy crop to manage - needs to be picked daily and as such offers and constant cashflow.

Starting small will also give you the oppurtunity to mix 'n match i.e. cultivate small fields of diffrent types of vegatables - don't use the whole 17rai for just one crop type.

2) Maize or Sweet Corn - a couple rai of maize and a couple rai of sweetcorn: both realtively easy crops to cultiavte and manage. Sweetcorn offers a good return sold on the local village/town market - steamed/cooked (with butter and salt), or sold by the sack to someone else who then cooks them to sell on. Maize is a good crop to grow if you intend to kep some live stock as your biggest cost factor with livetsock is always feed costs: fresh and ensiled maize whole plant will mean not having to buy in fresh or ensiled feed.

3) Cassava - theres a lot on the forum regards growing cassva and its a relatively easy crop to cultivate - but as is apparent form recent postings to the foum, its important you plant with inoculated stock. It can be sold fresh, or dried in the sun and kept to be used as livestock stock feed, or sold on at a later date.

4) Fruit - I know nothing about whats involved in cultiavting fruit trees, except of course that you are going to have little to no cash flow for the first season or so while they grow.

5) Livestock - Beef cattle - forget diary if you have no farming experiance and are limited to 17rai - the logistics and management issues will very quickly drive you mad - but about 30 beef cattle could be managed on 17 rai.

But in relation to any crop, you primary and most important consideration is going to be avaliability and cost of irrigation. Do not get this wrong.

And lastly ........... go through the contract related to possession & usage of the land with a fine toothcomb - make sure you understand it before signing on the dotted line.

Wish you all the best

MF

Edited April 5, 2009 by Maizefarmer

[GungaDin]

MF

What about your alternatives to Teak?

1) Merbau - completly termite resistant (lovely colour) - have used it on my floors.

2) Apitong - all the trucks you see with wooden decks - its Apitong (stays straight if it gets wet).

..... and a 3rd one, so long as you know what you are looking for as there are several types of this timber: Meranti - the dark red type.

[slapout]

This topic, What to plant on land I/we want to buy, comes up quite frequently. The next question seems to be what crop will make money, and then what crop requires little devoted time? As MF noted water is of prime concern and what crops are grown locally on similar soil type are 2 things to look at as well as many others. I have watched several farang/Thai couples buy land, myself included, so here are some of my thoughts; just because the girl was raised on a farm does not mean the know jack all about farming. Any crop requires time, a lot of it, to just get it to harvest stage, without considering any potential profit. If you want to figure your & wife's time spent on farm and crop production in cost terms your in the wrong venture. A vegetable/fruit garden with various crops rotated through out they year is a good possibility, if you can eliminate the need for a outside labor force. To do this on 17 rai you could use a small tractor 20 to 30 hp with attachments to turn/rototiller soil and a small seed planter, and attachment for weeding growing crops etc. This makes it possible, with proper crop spacing, for 2 people to plant seed over a large area, weed growing crops mechanically and irrigate and harvest as required. This type of set up may work if there is a profitable local market for produce, it would require long days 7 days a week 365 days a year as well a an extremely well thought out crop rotation, area devoted to specific crop, etc. Lickey can probably add a lot of info on a proposal such as this.

[Maizefarmer]

MF

What about your alternatives to Teak?

1) Merbau - completly termite resistant (lovely colour) - have used it on my floors.

2) Apitong - all the trucks you see with wooden decks - its Apitong (stays straight if it gets wet).

..... and a 3rd one, so long as you know what you are looking for as there are several types of this timber: Meranti - the dark red type.

Cashflow casflow and cashflow ....... I deliberatly left out crops that don't return cashflow immeidiatly, or within say the first season or so. Timber crops take years to mature before they generate a return, but fine - if one doesnt need regular/ongoing income and/or cashflow, and is prepeared to stick it for 10 - 20years ( and believe me - you need a good couple decades for any of the hardwood timbers generate the decent return they are potentialy capable of ), then yes - hardwood timbers become viable options - and pretty/very good ones at that as well.

As raised in an earlier thread, the observation that many hardwoods can be harvested long before 20years is up, is indeed correct - but the quality of the timber is not what it has the potential to be, and the return is well well down on what is possible by extending the time frame. While many folk set out at the start with the intention to allow a plantation to reach full maturity, all to often unforeseen financial circumstances (or just the option to get "cash-in-hand"), results in early harvesting - and long before the max return/growth point is reached.

slapouts comments once again add a perspective all to often overlooked by ex-pats who wish to farm: the "time factor" in the relationship with our partner ............. time is always the test and while long term planning (10 or 20 years ahead - er..... would that be reasonable??) is all very admirable, the truth of the matter (as reluctant as some folk are to acknowledge this) is that a large percentage of ex-pat/Thai partnerships do not survive long enough to reap the rewards of a hardwood timber crop.

Yes, I know hindsight is a great thing, but for many ex-pats, time spent in [rural] Thailand is one of lifes experiances .... and then they move on. So - added to my cashflow comment above: if you have the confidence that the relationship is going to stand the test of time ........ etc etc..... (needs no explaining), go for it.

NB - there is no right or wrong about this comment, and this part of TV is not about relationships, and there are many exceptions - but all too often have I heard hindsight comments from ex-pats that had they anticipated how things would ultimately go they would not have committed themselves to projects that take so long to mature and generate a return .... etc, etc, etc............

Personaly speaking (and this is personal opinion - nothing else: take it for what one thinks it worth), the earlier your farming project starts to generate cash flow, the more secure and settled you will feel - not to mention the boost in confidence it will give you (ask me I know - I was no exception, my other half & I went through all the emotions and frustrations ourselves - it was more than 5 years before we started to see a glimmer of long term light atthe end of the tunnel).

Start off with a seasonal/annual/perenial crop: it doesn't require fixed infrastructure and it permitts quick & easy changeover with minimal incurred expense. Get the feel for it (especially if you have no prior experiance) - and then make committments (like timber) that require long term committment.

Cattle and other livestock - may look easy, but its not easy to manage cattle profitably with limited land. They do have one thing in their favour: they can be offloaded very fast for cash if the need arises.

[GungaDin]

^^^ [/b]^^^ Good reply,

thanks.

[Lickey]

Hi OP,

At this stage your friend needs to diversify, and it would help to know if water ia available and what was grown before, at a guess, i would say cassava, and the cassava price this year didnt cover the previous tennants bank loan.

Cassava [man york tapioca man sapalang] whatever you want to call it doesnt need water other than a rainy season, but must be planted now for best results. [see cassava, pinned topics]

Fruit and timber trees take several years to develop as stated in previous posts, I was lucky in a way that our 40 rai farm had 25 rai of establised trees, again, once establised, these trees dont need extra water, just the rainy season, i believe if you try to play around with nature, it will lead to an early death of the trees.

My Favorites, well, besides the 10 different fruit trees, the year round cash crops are Banana, Papaya and Makua, providing you have water, my number 1 is Banana, it will keep growing in the dry season, [my bore pump cant cope with 1600 clumps of culms} but it can with papaya, dry season sales have been 10 bht a kilo Papaya, Banana stays the same year round, 5 bht a hand, buyer chooses,cuts and transports for that price, dry season income, 1200bht weekly, wet season 2000bht weekly, all the plants get is i cut up a culm and place round the base.

Makua, 6bht kilo green white or red on market now, but easy to grow, and picking can be back breaking at times, labour intensive on a daily basis, plus they need feeding to produce, 1 30kilo bag bat guano a week, 180 bht, its easy to see that there is no profit there, with 15 kilo a week, any spare after home cooking, i give to family or good customers at the salon.

Papaya needs to watched, for any evidence of leaf-curl,Mosaic,mealy bugs,root rot ect, i think once our present plants die of, it will be planted with long-fingered bananas, these can fetch 20 bht a hand or 40bht on the market.

Planting bananas, tractor with auger, 6bht a hole, spear sucker,7/10 bht per culm, [dip in hot water before planting] plant average size [10ft tall] with 3 mtr spacings in both directions, larger culms, 4 mtr,

If you plant now, no need for water, and you could be harvesting in 6 months, The used culms also make an exxcelent compost when mixed with chicken/pig or cow poo,

Hope this helps your friends, Cheers, Lickey.

[Lickey]

I forgot to mention, dont plant the whole 17rai with banana or anything else, if you have or hire a tractor, get him to plough some land [2rai or so] for a vegtable plot, as Slapout suggests, experimenting with euro veg can be fun and sometimes heart breaking,

Another thing to consider, is the land close by? is it fenced off? Electricty for a pump ect?is there somebody close by who could act as a watch man? if the answer is no on all counts, then cassava or sugar cane is about the only crops midnight shoppers arent interested in,

Cheers, Lickey..

[AsiaCheese]

Wow -- lots of great replies, and from where I sit, some serious experts talking here!!

Sorry for not answering earlier -- I was away. My friends will visit next week (bypassing the perils of songkran in Pattaya/Jomtien), and I've printed out all the posts for them. Personally, I have no idea about farming whatsoever, but have done a lot in building new businesses in my life, and there's certainly no difference here in assessing everything in advance and in checking out available options carefully.

Again -- thanks a lot to you all!!

Edited April 18, 2009 by AsiaCheese