Location

[XGM]

Some background: I had a business in thailand for a few years in the past, so I am familiar with setup and procedures of running a company there (I also speak some reasonable thai), but it was just a small service business in bangkok and not related to farming in any way. Today I am managing some main aspects of a company that grows (outside thailand) and sells its produce in Europe. Labour and other costs are rising, and we are looking to start a project in thailand. The produce is very specific and all the players in our relatively small industry know each other very well, so I don't feel comfortable to give full details about it at this stage, I do hope I could get some advice here without going into what exactly we'll be growing...

At this stage we are looking for a good location. Some more specifics:

- Growing period is October till February. Nothing before and nothing after (if I could use the space for something else, it will be "good to have" but not absolutely necessary).

- My crop doesn't like high humidity. I believe this will be my main problem. I will use a high greenhouse with roof vent, I can use fans and shade nets to reduce the heat and humidity to some extent when necessary but it should be reasonable to being with. Temperatures range of between 20-30 degrees will be good. A bit cooler will even be better but I don't think I can find something like that.

- If there is no or very little rain during the growing period I will prefer an insect net on the top, but if some rain should be expected I will have to use polyethylen. I can't have wet plants.

- I need to be close enough to Suvanabhumi airport (ideally upto 2 hours drive) as all the produce will be exported by air to various destinations mostly in europe. I need good availability of direct flights with large planes with sufficient space, I don't think Chiang Mai can offer that but I may be wrong.

- Plants are sensitive to water quality. I don't need a lot of water though, significantly less than what you'd use for sweet peppers for example.

- I'd like to have a space of about 10 hectares in total (say 60 rai) on which we will build at the first year 1-2 hectares of greenhouses.

I was thinking a relatively high region in korat province, maybe chokchai, could be a good location.

Any ideas and comments will be welcome.