A little from the Thai Farm.

[weitling]

Some news from the Thai farm. We have planted Cassava trees in December 2014. On the pictures, you can see that we today have started to fertilize the plants. The plants are growing well. I am surprised how fast they grow. we expect to reap roots in July month.

 

[obes]

Very interesting weitling, - please keep us up to date with you farming/life's efforts

 

[weitling]

Very interesting weitling, - please keep us up to date with you farming/life's efforts

Thanks. I will do. I enjoy a lot the Farm and it is greate fun.

 

[wabbits]

Had a crack at harvesting Tapioca with that forked tooth steel on a shovel shaft sort of fun but can see how quick it becomes back breaking.
Amazing how much per acre they get bloody fertile.

 

[weitling]

In December we prepared the Casava trees for plant. They come in long sticks and is cut into 40Cm sticks that is planted directly into the earth.

At New Year we help a little new years party for the kids around, with balloons and playing games. There parents also came and we made some food for eat as well. They enjoyed a lot and the kids had a lot of fun.

 

[sidvicious]

Interesting.What is the main use for it in Thailand?

 

[weitling]

Interesting.What is the main use for it in Thailand?

It is the roots that we are interested in. Harvesting root, which can be used to flour for bread or cake. You can also use it fresh in salads. One can also extract bio-diesel from the roots.

 

[Hatari]

woohoo a farm thread . . . wonderful; memories of my rural year, yes we had cassava . . .

cut the canes for next season, then tractor comes through to pick up all the cassava tubers. Workers (mostly teams of women with machetes) were paid on a 'per bundle' rate, best were getting 750b per day.

I, meanwhile, would have failed to make the 300b minimum wage.

MsH the accountant, did, well, 'managed everything'
Calculated costs, payments, purchasing, labour hire, wages, organised someone to organise cold water and lunches (and 3-in-1 coffee for me); in the end her summary showed what a sad effort it had been.
But no regrets, good experience for me. Now that area of land is all in sugar, 1st harvest last week.
Rest is in eucalyptus for paper pulp - as per in back of some pics

Tractor-prepared land and the short sticks of cane are planted for the next crop.

signs of life as the canes sprout

Dug up by tractor, taken to the weigh station and sold

Returns - let's just say 'limited' after drought then flood.

We did save some costs getting tractor/plowing at reduced (b-in-law) rate but it all adds up. Costs included labour for cutting the canes of previous crop, tractor and labour for harvest of tubers, transport to weigh station, then start over with tractor for plowing, ground prep and fertiliser spreading, planting, weed spraying . . . back to cane cutting

 

[Zablive]

Although cassava is high in starch it is very low in nutritional value apparently.
Making it a low value human food source.
I believe a lot is chipped and dried for stock food.
No idea what % is processed into tapioca.

Our nett returns were poor also.

 

[Hatari]

Another 'joy of farming'

I was disappointed (politely) to find that my 'special' eucalyptus trees had been accidentally harvested last year, despite buyer being specifically told to leave that block alone.

My babies!

With b-in-law (a farm/hort advisor) chose 100 good seedlings from about 12,000 he was putting in by tractor, planted into ground I'd prepared (all by hand, I'll add!) worked out drainage, synthetic as well as chicken manure fertiliser, and year round irrigation incl using grey water from showers and laundry. Hand/ladder pruned every few months till they were too high. Intention had been to continue with the right mix/blend fertiliser, let them grow to 7-8 years then cull any weaklings, down to about 60 trees, then leave them for old age (mine, theirs too)

They were only marginally better than the ones in the main plantation, but my hopes were that as they grew older/bigger the extra care would have seen higher than average growth rates.

Bugger, they were stumped, at 4yrs, paper pulp here we come.
Now they've re-sprouted as they do, 2-3 new trunks off most stumps, and will re-cut and removed the stumps another 3-4 years.

My experiment - FAIL.

 

[Zablive]

Tell the buyer he owes you double.

 

[Hatari]

Tell the buyer he owes you double.

He? She was a she . . . assessor/estimator/buyer, and payer - she paid cash in advance after several 'negotiating' sessions; naturally it'll always be in buyer's favour but they pay the people to cut them down, load and transport to paper mill. Money up front and leave them to it.

After that we had a controlled burnoff of all the branches, offcuts. That was fun - man play with fire! - I hired a group of high school boys to manage the fire breaks. Then the trees re-sprout, and another dose of chicken manure which I'm not convinced has much benefit..

Second time round there's more costs involved in having all the stumps ripped out and removed, somewhere between 7-7500 of them my calculation, has to be factored in to the overall profit figure, as is land rehab before replanting

 

[weitling]

Hatari. what about sugarcane. I heard it was mor easy to deal with. And less cost for produce.

 

[Hatari]

Sugar - we're on to it (indirectly, now lease land back to b-in-law for a set fee plus % of return, no actual farming involvement)
No more cassava, the first (get 2 years from a crop) sugar was harvested last week.
We rely on the b-in-law he's a part-time regional farm advisor - crops and irrigation, and runs the main farm plus the farm contracting business

2 January 2015 - sugar (since harvested) one side, re-sprouted eucs to the right

2 January 2015 - sugar - some small/recently planted, and the tall stuff - and it is tall, I'm 1.87m, harvested last week

Can't find it now; today either B Post or Nation had a story about gov't pushing for more sugar/less rice production, but from my knowledge most rice land is unsuitable for conversion, it's rice land for a reason - it floods. Too wet for sugar.

************

Cassava, yet another fraud in today's Bangkok Post - just 3.5 billion baht gone missing this time

Pledging probe turns to tapioca stockpile
B3.5bn-loss estimated from missing pellets

 

[weitling]

Thanks for the info. I will look into sugar next time after our harvest of the cassava. Nice to meet another farmer.
As most of the Danes in my age I have worked as farmer when I was young. So this is fun for me to follow and do.

 

[kaptainrob]

Sugar - we're on to it (indirectly, now lease land back to b-in-law for a set fee plus % of return, no actual farming involvement)
No more cassava, the first (get 2 years from a crop) sugar was harvested last week.
We rely on the b-in-law he's a part-time regional farm advisor - crops and irrigation, and runs the main farm plus the farm contracting business

2 January 2015 - sugar (since harvested) one side, re-sprouted eucs to the right

2 January 2015 - sugar - some small/recently planted, and the tall stuff - and it is tall, I'm 1.87m, harvested last week

Can't find it now; today either B Post or Nation had a story about gov't pushing for more sugar/less rice production, but from my knowledge most rice land is unsuitable for conversion, it's rice land for a reason - it floods. Too wet for sugar.

************

Cassava, yet another fraud in today's Bangkok Post - just 3.5 billion baht gone missing this time

Pledging probe turns to tapioca stockpile
B3.5bn-loss estimated from missing pellets

AFAIK the biggest hurdle for rice to sugar conversion is proximity to the mill. Sugar mill construction is strictly regulated. Yasothon and Ubon R~ farmers are simply too far away and transport costs render the conversion nonviable.

Cassava planting and harvesting is very hard work and returns are low. The work is enjoyable, I've done it, and income may supplement rice farmers in the off-season.

 

[Zablive]

There are far less intensive crops to grow than cassava.

The one thing Thai farmers on small holdings need to learn is "Crop Rotation.
Another would be ploughing in crop residues c/f burning.

But as always transport to a market is the key to profitability.

 

[weitling]

There are far less intensive crops to grow than cassava.

The one thing Thai farmers on small holdings need to learn is "Crop Rotation.
Another would be ploughing in crop residues c/f burning.

But as always transport to a market is the key to profitability.

For sure you are right. As I understood the government has garantien a price of 2800 the per 1000kg. So I am excited to see how much 5000 plants would bring.

 

[Cuzzy]

I'm very interested in this thread.

The 'shop' is not performing as well as it could now that Papa has gone and the girls ( Mama & Au ) are struggling. On top of that, Au is coming here next month for 6 months and somebody has opened a new shop in the village more like a 711 which I suspect is drawing a lot of the customers.

Over the last couple of years I have tried to get the family to look at alternatives to the traditional sugar, rice, chilli crops that everyone does around Chumphae. I'm looking for something of higher value.

Initially I thought of vanilla but that is very labour intensive and they don't have the right environmental conditions as the farm is open ground.

Watching and reading with interest..

Thanks

 

[Hatari]

M.R. Pridiyathorn says farmers will be asked to shift to sugarcane farming
in Business | January 19, 2015

Deputy Prime Minister M.R. Pridiyathorn Devakula will discuss with rice farmer leaders in March about replacing white rice farming with better quality grains and shifting rice farming to sugarcane farming in parts of the central plains.
Based on the forecast of the prices of agricultural produce this year, he said that only sugarcane has the potential of getting the best price, he said, adding that, under the plan, about 700,000 rai of land in Kanchanaburi will be turned into sugarcane farm as there is still ample demand for sugarcane by sugar refineries in the province.

The deputy prime minister pointed out that it would take 3-4 years to clear up the 17 million tonnes of leftover rice bought under the rice pledging scheme and there is slim chance that the rice will fetch more than 9,000 baht per tonne.

He made clear that the government would not try to solve the rice price issue this year but would try to help farmers by convincing them to shift to sugarcane farming particularly in Kanchanaburi province.

As for small-scale farmers who have an average of ten rai of farmland which mostly have no access to irrigation system in the Northeast, the deputy prime minister said that officials would fan out to advice the farmers to plant alternative crops such as beans which do not consume much water with the government providing them with plant seeds free of charge.

*************
My observation is that better money from farming is the farm contracting/machinery side of the business, but a lot of capital required for tractors/harvesters/transporters etc. A couple of tractors with all the attachments - rippers/plows, seed and euc planting, blades, bucket, maybe backhoe, and 'grabbers" used in sugar harvest, good returns

*************
Corn - this field next to a river and well irrigated, a lot of outlay on pump/pipes imo

Palm oil - another option but careful re drainage/irrigation - as with rubber trees 'no wet feet'