need input. got a few acres of land, thinking of doing something with it . belongs to dad, used to be orchard with rambutan/durian/chempedak trees, but too many monkeys ruin the fruits. what is the most viable option in this sized land?

previously i think of running palm oil plantation too,but you need hundreds of acres to run a decent one,and palm oil plantation is politic also.you need to know some inside people to get their support.

i would suggest to plant vegetation,and go for farming,like rising chicken and cattle.

How many acres??

Which part of Malaysia??

How well is the irrigation??

Is it flat or hilly??

Do you know how to tap rubber??

Dreamer

Ah_suknat,

In East Malaysia, you need hundred and thousand of acres for Oil Palm since in most cases, you have to build your own infrastucture. In west malaysia, the infrastructure is better, you might be able to do it with 20 acres.

Dreamer

I'll go for palm oil since it has greater potential.

My uncle has his own land planting rubber, palm oil and durian and is the only person running it and according to him:

Rubber has very good price now - young kampung ppl are running back to kampung to tap rubber; for a few hours of work they make couple of hundred. Problem is it's easy to steal the latex so you need to jaga.

Palm oil - price is OK but you need to plant a lot to make profit. Less work than rubber according to him.

Durian - profit margin is getting worse. Now he only keeps some trees for own consumption and sell when there's too much.

Another friend's family used to rear poultry but couldn't compete with the large poultry farms and quit. For poultry and cattle you need economies of scale.

rubber is good too,my grandfather got rubber estate,1 kilo of rubber milk is like 4 to 5 ringgit.

is allright if you dunno how to tap,just employ some kampung boy or indon to do it for you.and you can make house in the estate for them to stay and look out the estate for you.

but rubber estate and palm oil you need to wait 3 years lo atleast then only you start to see some result.

in east malaysia,the land is still cheap,so you can buy large land.in west,bloody expensive.and in most cases you dont have the chance to buy a good one eventho you got money.

is the next area of your land is devoloping?you might want to check that out too.can sell high price

Let be logic here, if you start to plant something like rubber tree and palm oil tree it will take you 5 ormore years before you can see the result or result. Prior to that its just forking money out from the pocket.

You are better off planting vege or raising some cattle or chicken as you will see the result sooner. Just my 2 cents

You provide too little information about your land, try to be more detailed.

A few acres is waaaay too little for any cash crop planting, oil palm and rubber estate recommended to have at least 50 acres for good economical scale and must have good road access.

For example oil palm, you need roads to allow big 10 tons lorries to enter to pick up your fresh fruit branch(FFB), which is very heavy and bulky stuff. And then you need an oil mill to take your FFB too, remember that FFB cannot store long, usually they are processed within the same day or they will get rotten. And IF you really can find oil mill you need to consider many factors too, how far is the oil mill? Is the oil mill willing to take your fruit? etc etc etc.

Okay, now talking about short term crop. Like vege, chili, jagung and so on. They can really bring in profit with small acres of land. But, you have to consider manpower too, are you going to take care the land yourself? Where can you hire cheap labour? Do you have enough startup cost to install irrigation, fertilizer, seeds, prepare land etc? Vege farm is labour intensive. And the monkeys, dont think they will leave you alone if you chop their tree...

Or you might want to considered raising some cattle? Or even goat? Gov is encouraging people to raise cattle and goat to reduce import of foreign meat. You might be able to get help from gov(like provide the goat for you), you just need to build a barn for goats to rest and then if you have a suitable size, they breed quite fast. You need to feed them with mostly grass and once a while some animal feed as food suppliment. The monkeys cant bother your goats too much, and you can keep the trees for the shade - small forest is very suitable for goat rearing, just fence the area.

Oh, a plus, a few acres(3-5 acres) can rear a few thousands goats if you use high capacity barn.

This post has been edited by rexis: Sep 6 2006, 09:49 AM

If you are in Selangor, Perak, Johor and those states with good infrastructure, there are people collecting from small plantation (20 acres) with small lorry and then sell to the oil mill.

Dreamer

My uncle is surviving on 10+ acres of land with palm oil.

You dont need 10 ton lorries, as Dreamer said people will come in with small lorries to pick up the fruits to the mill.

My uncle tried goat-rearing with some goats from govt few years back but didnt work out well.
(He is a 100% career farmer and has tried almost everything!)

slim river perak. irrigation not bad, flat land, near a small stream. tapped rubber for fun at my dad's old orchard in kedah (sold edi). around 10 acres. planning on buying adjacent land, got around 15 acres if buy that.

thanks for the advice. very helpful.

Is it near industrial area? Well if it is u can start by building those factories.With zinks and so on,and rent it out?

thats what my dad did.

plan some pieces of gold in the land... they should be raw gold..

then get someone to go there and "accidently" find the gold...

after that sell ur land off...


hahahaah joking joking...

Rubber & Palm, takes 3-5 years b4 they are ready to tap/fruit. Can you wait?

Chicken - Ayam kampung still can. Other than that margin very poor.

Cow/Goat - U need to look after them / pay someone to look after them.

Vegetable - Unless u're selling it to the consumer on ur own directly, or else don't touch it. Cos u won't have the final say on price.

Fruit - Durian is definitely out. Rambutan is too common as well. The 2 local fruit which still fetch good prices are mangosteen & banana. Both around RM2/kg. An average bunch of banana weighs between 40-60kg. Mangosteen, u petik sampai u pening.

How about you make a pond and breed fish,ive been having this idea for a while, i dont really know if it works but fish are easy to breed and profit wise its good.

fruit prices are fluctuating. used to have an orchard in kedah, then the durian prices go down like hell. threw away alot, gave for free alot too. i'm thinking of aquaculture too. fish rearing. but in perak what is the agriculture that the govenment would give aids most easily? thinking of taking a course at the agri department.

This post has been edited by radmaszeal: Sep 6 2006, 12:11 PM

ask the FELDA people,they might help,try google their email or contat numbers.

Did you know that you can rear cattles for just 4 months before selling them ? It's called feedlot method. Consult jabatan perkhidmatan haiwan for the manual.

If you really get ANYONE in FELDA to reply your email i will bloody eat ten bundle of green bananas in front of their office.