IsaanAussie

From a pond to rice paddy? Why not set up a syphon system from 4" plastic pipe?

Of course it is possible, this is Thailand. For the farmer, the question is what is the volume of rice needed and the price paid. We grow Hom Mali 105 (jasmine) and mill our rice on farm for family use and for retail sale. Anyone that wants me to grow another type of rice has only got to ask and stump up for the costs. Friends grow many different organic heritage types. Anything is possible if there is a market.

WOW, look at the telephone number on this thing! Laser cut! Shows just how far things have come in the last 15-20 years. When I started looking for implements "hand painted" or stencilled was the normal for the best. I am feeling so old.

Hi KS, What sort of money for those units?

Can I suggest you do some research on the recent development of Thai farming from a local farmer perspective? Start with the reality of a nation upended in 1997 by the economic crisis when everything stopped. A time when over 70% of Thai people were regarded as subsistence farmers who had no income and paid no tax.

Interesting dialogue between you guys. I would suggest you bring this to the main Farming Forum to get a wider audience. I have been interested in balers here for twenty years. The first to appear here in Isaan were very secondhand small square balers that were imported by the container load from places like Australia. At the time Australia was moving to large rounds and the old ones were scrap metal. Fifteen years ago I could buy a "rebuilt" baler here in Sisaket for about 50K baht. Some were rebuilt using only the baling segment onto pickup chassis and used as static units to load manually from straw piles from the threshers. Currently the import tax laws have changed and secondhand implements are not favoured. Kubota assemble a category 1/2 baler here in Thailand which I believe will gain market share. The main change here is the fact that the harvesters leave windrowed straw which makes baling the straw a simple task. But as with all things the farmer here has little money to pay subcontractors, so it is extremely price sensitive. I have looked very closely at importing a baler to make small round bales. Plans on hold until the current global situation normalises.

Today was the first real run. I milled 3 bags of approx 40 kg of paddy and the harvester rubbish. The longest part was I had to run some through the screens 3 times to get all the grass, sticks and empty husks out. The actual milling step went really well. From the 120Kg (approx): 52 Kg of rice - 32 kg clean unbroken rice, 13 kg of 50% broken , and 7kg of broken rice. The family wanted to dump the 50% in with the good stuff but it had a few seeds (smaller haystack to search). 57 Kg of rice bran, germ and husk. That has buyers already at 5 baht a kg. I might get a separate husker later but current thought is to use it as feed. For the maths guys, the harvester contributed about 10 kg of extra cleaning. That is a fact of life here and I am pleased to be able to get clean unbroken rice at all. I hate picking out seeds.

Well it has arrived and been setup. Run a half a bag of dry dirty rice through it. The first cleaning stage took the straw, empty husks etc out. It managed about 90% of the small seeds. A fair bit of broken rice which is to be expected in dry grains. More trials to figure it out but overall so far not bad, getting at least as good as the local millers are doing plus I get the broken rice and bran. Polish level looks OK.

Well I have just purchased a 5 in 1 rice mill on the inter-webs. What a leap of faith! Actually I have spent a <deleted> load of time looking at this issue. This machine allows you to preclean the paddy of junk via the multi screens before it goes through mill. The cyclone fan removes empty husk and straw. Smaller stones and other seeds removed by the screens. Objective, mill nothing but paddy rice! For those interested

Can I ask if you have estimated the start up time and cost to achieve 20 market pigs target? Having been through this, I advise you to study how you will achieve this carefully. Happy to discuss.

I am finally going to buy a rice mill for the farm. Should have done it years ago when we kept pigs. Anyway hopefully someone will clue me in if I have choosen another recipe for disaster. I like the small cyclone on the bran chute. But what do I know? Anyhow will go down to Buri Ram and check it out for 18,500 baht. thaitopvip-rice mill model 7.mp4

Most countries including Thailand, have public and private health systems with different price points. It may be feasible that the public system pricing could be used to develop a basic health insurance offered by the health department to foreign nationals on long stay visas. I for one would not be against paying the average cost of health by capita here to get basic cover. That is, pay the annual cost based on my age as a fee to the government. For those who want private cover let them enter insurance company plans. Perhaps some form of gap insurance could be offered to those covered by the government plan.

Correct, O-A visas are sourced via overseas Thai embassies and some consulates and granted under the Ministry of Foreign affairs. O visas (3 month) were also granted by MFO external to Thailand. The O visas and extensions are granted inside Thailand by the Ministry of Internal Affairs via the Immigration department. Note: For an O-A retirement visa you have to show 800K baht or foreign equivalent in a bank account but not necessarily in Thailand. That visa runs you 2 years before you need to extend it. Hence, before this pandemic etc, you could stay here without any funds deposited before you needed to satisfy the local deposits necessary to obtain an extension of stay based on your visa.

Yes for extensions. Not for new visas?

Does anyone know what the health insurance requirements are?