hi amir,

welcome to the thread.

what is a PTD Officer ? please enlighten us. thanks

about posting pictures you can go to sites like ImageShack to open an account and upload your picture there. Then get a link and paste it here so people can access it. thanks

PTD stands for Pegawai Tadbir dan Diplomatik. I work for the government. So what do you honestly think about this agarwood business? Does it have any potential? And one more thing, could you please give me some suggestions on what other plants, tress or livestocks which have potential to make money. I'm currently planting agarwood but to avoid risk, I have to diversify. In my opinion planting chilies or other vegetables require a lot of work. Livestocks as well. So I'm really interested in something that doesn't require a lot of effort or less training. I want YOUR SUGGESTIONS. Thanks for teaching me on how to upload pictures. But why's the picture small? 

sorry i am using PhotoBucket. not too sure about Image Shack. try it and tinker about it.

PTD of which department ?

about your agarwood business definitely the figures looks inviting but have you surveyed enough about it and its market. sometimes the report or news can say alot of wonderful wonderful things but it aint to be. i hope you can do more research.

for the plants or livestocks, suggest you go for cash crops like 4-6 mths crops that would be faster. actually agriculture need lots of work. so you cant be lazy and take the easy way out...

Actually I haven't start working and don't know which department yet. I'll start working in 2 weeks time. Going to Sungai Petani for training.

About agarwood, I only heard a lot of good news but I think there are drawbacks as well. That's why I'm looking for another business too. To minimize risk. I still haven't stop doing research.

Not lazy, just I couldn't monitor my plants/livestocks as often as I could because of my job commitment in the future. I'm not a full time business man as you are. 

Could you please explain to me about your business? How much capital needed? What kind of training I have to go through? How much does a kilo of those fish cost in the market (The pricing)? And anything that would interest me. Cakap Melayu lagi senang. 

yea.. im actually finding those for my mealworms..
i did emailed them but no reply so far.. lol..

erm.. anyone knows are there other alternatives to feed my mealworms ??
i need alot to feed them and those oats available in grocery store cost too much..

wow
i really interested in agriculture & aquaculture
i planning to join this business on next year
ya i know...still need to learn many things
then next few years...i slowly converted to full-time businessmen
tired with office life already

Just to let you guys know, there's this one old guy planting gaharu on his 30 acres land. A Japanese investor wants to buy the trees for RM60 million.
RM60,000,000. 

Woooow, cool thread. I really didn't know this thread existed. Well, a bit of introduction of myself. My name is Amir and I'm 24 years old. Soon to be working as a PTD officer. I have 7 acres of land in Sungai Merab (Near to Bandar Baru Bangi and Putrajaya) which before this I didn't know what to do with it. My friend introduced me to Agarwood/Gaharu a few weeks ago and I started to do a lot of research on it. In my opinion, I think it has a lot of potential to make money.Currently I have 10 trees which I recently bought (No money yet  ) and would buy more trees soon.Maybe next month I will start to plant 1000+ trees on my land.Well if anyone interested or currently planting these trees, do inform me. Maybe we could work together.

Check out my thread in finance and business section.

...

- Do intercropping, get a partner and establish a mutual agreement, I am sending you a porposal so part of the fertilizer and goodness applied intercropping will benefit your trees as well, and the land will be properly managed so tall grasses wont outgrow your trees, they are the thing that can suck up most of the nutrients. After the trees grow up, you can rear cow/goats among them, they can use the shade.

- Build a small house there so you can spend a nice weekend there once a while! Or drop an old container there like our tread starter for this purpose

Wa... too quiet de this thread...

There are many problems with the agri industry in Malaysia as a whole... Truth is that there is no real concerted effort in galvanising and organising the various industry players into a single consortium of sort. Take for instance Thailand, look at how their government has organized their agricultural sector. It is so well thought out and planned that Thailand is so well established as an agriculture hub. About the only organized sector in Malaysian agriculture now is the palm oil sector.... And even then, it is because the various private sector players have made the effort to literally force the government to do so.

I'll resound what many seniors in the industry have told me regarding recent public uni grads in agri: They don't have enough knowledge about agriculture.

Mind you, these bosses are senior alumni from the same public uni they are commenting about, although they got their degrees decades before.

I won't comment about the technical knowledge of these graduates. It is both unjust and unfair to do so because it is not their fault. The truth is that public unis do not offer a comprehensive study of agriculture as a whole, thus giving rise to grads with a serious lacking in the technical know-how of how the sector functions. The subject matter thought in the public unis are so touvh-and-go that at the end of the day, it is even arguementable that what they know covers even 40% of what is required of them.
The other thing these seniors have brought up in our frequent discussions is that most public uni graduates lack that certain aptitude that qualifies them for the industry. Now that, I'm not too sure about this because I'm not from a public uni, and if I've met with many public uni grads recently, I don't think I would know that they are grads. Even though my colleagues recruited along with me are from public uni, based upon what the senior people have told me, then I would assume that my colleagues would have had that same aptitude the senior people were looking for in them, so no good for comparison there.
What are your take on this matter?

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Added on November 16, 2007, 5:14 pm
Bro.... if you average out the weight of FFB, you will not get 50kg per bunch. Unless you are talking about Dura palms, where the shell is darn thick, and not accepted by the mills. Current planting materials are of the Tenera strains, a.k.a. D x P materials. Depending on your planting material source, and your plantatation management standards, and the age of your palms, the standard range is 20kg - 30kg. Of course there will be instances where bunches do reach more than that... I've recorded bunches in my place going up to 100kgs, for Tenera even.

The proposed harvesting standard is every 10 days round, i.e. 3 harvestings per month, but in practice it is difficult to do so. Two harvesting per month is more practical. If your hectarage is small, then maybe 3 harvestings can; but if you've a large hectarage, then it is quite difficult. As for optimum density, it really depends on your soil type and your planting material again. For 50 stand per acre, that's if you plant on mineral soils and your material is AVROS basal material. AVROS materials are characteristically tall palms, so you need a lower density to compensate for theri height. Generally, peat soils require a higher planting density, and best is the material used is one with dwarfing mechanism. But in truth, most plantations will function well on density plantings of 56-58 stands per acre.

RM250 per tonne is in 2006, correct. This year, the average stands at RM500, about twice for FFB. So at an average of say 25kg per bunch, at optimum ripeness standard (no black bunches), and each and every palm produces 2 harvestings per month, at 50kg bunch total, 55 palm stands will give 2.750 tonnes FFB per acre. At RM500 per tonne, that equates to RM1375; for 3 harvestings you're looking RM2063 per month per acre. Of course your real returns will be far less than this after you factor in the fertilzer cost (bloody expensive now), cost of labour to harvest, maintain, and look after your hectarage, and of course cost of transporting your FFB to the nearest mill. If you choose not to actively manage your land, but have a contractor to run it for you, then you'd likely see about 50% of that figure missing; after all, you're in a partnership of sort where the contractor provides the labour and sale, you provide the land and crop.
Dreamer might be right about RM18700 for 100 acres. If that is nett return, then even more likely to be the case. Cost of labour might be one factor, cost of transportation is another. Also it may be that the plantation has many stands of Pisifera palms, which will not yield many bunches in its lifetime, or that the plantation is located in East Malaysia. East Malaysia has a tendency to pay far less for FFB compared to West Malaysia. Probably has to do something with the presence of few but huge plantations with mills, and many small holders, so they can cut-throat the small holders. Don't want to speculate about that, but it could be the case.

Oh yes, time to spice up this thread a bit.

Very very informative post, and yes, it was already a year since i posted here, and the price is already two fold, omg.

Fertilizer is freaking expensive @RM6000/ton for a decent imported fertilizer! Oil palm is fertilizer intensive crop that require both chemical and organic fertilizer.

Integrated farming pratices for sustainable agricultural programme, sounds great, can elaborate more about it?

Especially what is Sustainable Agriculture Programme? is it some kind of official programme?

And tumpang post, anybody know anything about Good Agricultural Practice aka GAP? As well as where should I go to seek for guildance?

actually you can try some local fertiliser.
they are much cheaper and we have capable producers.

this month's AgroWorld has a few potential suppliers.

Oh yes am going to call that two liquid fertilizer supplier real soon

Meanwhile, still looking for land. As well as trying to solve my transportation problem to enable me to be more accessible to further lands.

Yeah, im getting a moto. I am not going to burn half a condo every month with my car! And once i started my farm project, its either do or die! So I am trying to be very cost concious here.

LOANS,SEMINAR/COURSES,PROMOTION ETC

I work for the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development under 'ekonomi desa'. Anyone who's interested to start a business(Agriculture,food processing,tourism,cyber cafe,doby and much more), we could help you. Our services include loans (Up to RM500k),seminars and courses,marketing and so on. But for BUMIS only. Check out our website at www.rurallink.gov.my for more information.

Thanks for the information.

When you mention courses, do you mean agricultural training courses or how-to-make-banana-chip or both? If possible, can you provide me some contacts regarding agricultural training courses, particularily vegetable and short term course? I am not a bumi thou but I am the type who able to affort some school fee.

Some reports in newspaper said SME loans for all race? Or this loan is another type?

brother this is not SME loan. this is Min of Rural development. so its different.

Actually we cooperate with SME bank and Bank Rakyat. The loan will be provided by them with low interest.

yeah i know but this funding is NOT for SME. and moreover your criteria clearly states that BUMI only.

where are you stationed ?
in Putrajaya ?