Lam Yai - Longan yields This Year.

Generalchaos · August 15, 2016

Don't know about the rest of the country but the yields this year for Lam Yai are a bit down on past years. (Chiang Mai) Grade AA are fetching the best prices in almost a decade, cause no one has any!

Our local grader is collecting ours in his truck every night for free as we are the only people in the area that have AA's!

Current count is - (Based on 10 Rai)

AA=4993 KG coming in at 173,000 Baht

A=4000 Kg coming in at 70200 Baht.

B =2374 coming in at 17000 Baht.

C =394KG coming in at 788 Baht.

Total up to now is 11,732KG picked, with a price of 255,636 Baht with a cost of 65,000 Baht.

Got to be better than the SCB fixed rate deposit that pay 7500 for a million over 8 months!

Ratio of AA's is lower than last year, but is picking up as the fruit matures.

43% AA

34% A

20% B

3% C

Anyone seeing similar results?

3 Trees have keeled over and died due to what looks like Termites, fruit ruined! Down to about 150 trees from about 200 due to the same problem.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Generalchaos

Halfaboy · August 15, 2016

Interesting to read.

Had no idea that there would be something like grades for longans and also no idea about revenues. Could you elaborate about which kind of costs have you made. I guess the majority would be fertiliser and manpower.

Congratulations with the result.

Generalchaos · August 15, 2016

Thanks HalfaBoy!

The grading is critical and where you make or lose money! If you can get AA grade you are in the money, if you get A you will break even, if you are in B and C ......forget it you will lose everything![]]

AA ]never existed back in 1999, there was only A /B /C but they invented AA as a premium, usually bought by the Chinese as a medicine, dried and used for soups, it has always commanded a premium.

When I first came here it was selling for 65 Baht a kilo and they company that wanted it supplied the labour and all the chemicals!!!!

Later, it went down to 11 Baht a kilo and you paid for everything, so you see it is not exactly a cash cow!

I would say 80% is fertilizer and the labour required to spray it.

We normally put about 1000 litres at a time, the first is Sarn, the chemical that promotes growth. After that it is just a range of fertilizer pellets spread on the ground (15-15-15) and after that usually what Thai call "Hormones" which are like a Bio spray to encourage growth. Once the flowers are turning to fruit we add some 20-20-0 and some 47-47-0, I think it was overdone this year as the yield on AA was well down, we had too many fruit, but many too small, previous years using mainly 15-15-15 gave more like 70 % AA Grade.

Water costs nothing, we are on the Ping and pump it from the ground, the electric is between 60 Baht and 1000 Baht a month using the cheapo government 5 Amp meter for agriculture, not really much more to shell out except some food and whisky for the guys picking. maybe 2000 Baht a day and these old fossils are picking over a ton per day.

There is also a couple of sprays to kill caterpillars and other insects, and a mix of growth chemicals, again probably like Baby Bio or similar.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Generalchaos

Halfaboy · August 15, 2016

Thanks a lot for your elaborate answer. Always interesting to learn about something new.

Have fun !

Generalchaos · August 15, 2016

You are more than welcome, but I wouldn't ever give up the day job to mess with this stuff! My fingers have been burned many times over the past few years!

Halfaboy · August 15, 2016

Very interesting read. Never thought about this.

I don't want to cause too much trouble, but would it be possible to add some pictures. I.e. of an overview of the field and also some (more detailed) pictures of the fruit growing on trees (or whatever it may be).

Generalchaos · August 15, 2016

wait until the sun shines tomorrow, I can post you a photo. It is actually a good return on you money, way better than what you get from interest at the bank, but you can get wiped out if you get a good hail storm!

Edited August 15, 2016 by Generalchaos