Haha i try see that day got any things to do or not..cos i am from Melaka,kinda far..will try to adjust my time..

Before this, I would like to ask, HOW should we recognize each other? Here are my suggestions:
- everyone carry one watermelon on head, available from jaya jusco.
- everyone dress red color.
- para/I go book a table under one agreed name like "para", "agri low yat", etc and we just see nandos counters and ask for it. *
- put up notice in front of nando's
- I/mj will bring a pot of plant and everyone just look for any table with a pot of live plant.
- para bring a dead fish and everyone just follow the smell...
- everyone wear a farmer hat(those made of straw) to identify each other
Anymore idea? (the * is the one i suggested)
(no everyone wear a red rose please:D )

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Agriculture: where to go?

Allow me to voice out some brain storming.

You interested to go into agriculture, and being motivated enough to do read up and study into it, but still, you are lack of idea about which part of agriculture you want to go.

Should I plant some front page cover crop from some agri magazine? Should I plant the famous oil palm or other cash crop? Should I take advice from Jabatan Pertanian to plant some new crops like vanilla, Jatropha, Rosella, etc? Or I just stick with something that are very common(high competition) but have steady demand?

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I have been reading up Agriworld magazine for quite some time, and their front page stories can really bring up people attentions to a particular crop, not too long ago, they featured dragon fruit in front page stories for a few consecutive months, technically bringing enough highlights and ventures into the cactus plant. You can say they cover the stories because it is one famous topic at that time being, but no doubt that they bring even more attention at that crop. Many people venture into pitaya farming, not everyone succeed, some suffered badly with all their cactus having rotten stem disease, while some had their cactus drowned during the great flood. Of course there are successful example, but they do not earn their success by just sitting there and just waiting their crops to grow, but spent a lot in marketing their products, to both consumers as well as planters(in supplying seedlings, trainings etc)

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Cash crop is the crop that grow for cash, and usually for satisfying commercial customers, long term crop like the top of the range oil palm, rubber tree, black pepper, cocoa, coffee etc, short term cash crop include maize, soy(which is not suitable or rare in Malaysia), cassava, sugar cane etc. The term commercial means in order to achieve efficient production cost, you will need a proper scale. Larger start up cost would involved, about which cash crop to pick, you will need to identify which cash crop is needed at your neighborhood, for eg, if the nearest palm oil mill is some 200 km away, dont choose to plant oil palm, as nobody would take oil palm from you.

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New crop?! Ah, the opportunity of being a pioneer also means the opportunity to earn the pioneer income, you would have the change to earn a share of a new pie aka new demand, which might result an attractive return. However, there is always a risk, and the risk is you might just planted truckloads of harvest that nobody would take. For example, we can see aloe vera plantations in thailand, but it doesnt mean it is viable in malaysia, unless you can find some factory that will buy it in bulks. Another example, currently the folks from agriculture department has encouraging people to plant rosella, a plant that yield a sour red fruit that can be used to make health products, drinks, etc. But it would be best to identify if there is actually any available market for it first before you invest into a rosella farm. Are there any physical action taken by agri dept to encourage it? Are there any factory taking it? Are they suitable as fresh fruit? Are hypermarkets willing to sell it? Opening up a stall in the local pasar pagi is the last thing you want to do, I believe you can better make use your time to focus on planting higher return crops.

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The thing that always in demand is fresh vegetable and fruit crop, or any freshly eaten or home cooked crop, like mushroom. There are plenty of choices, leafy vegetables, gourd vines, chili and tomatoes, root vegetables, fruit trees, fruit vines, etc. In vegetable/fruit farming, it would be not advisable to depend on middle man or whole sellers as they will chop you with low price, but in many case, people do depend on them to cash their harvest, in some case, if your farm have enough varieties of vegetables, you can open up your own vege stall or shop to market them. Generally the wholesale price is depends on the availability of supply, during good months with good weather, you will score a beautiful harvest tonnage, but might suffer low price due to over supply, during bad months with poor weather, or disease(like the papaya rotten disease), price will be very attractive, but you get low or even no harvest. The ideal would be planting your crops in a greenhouse, which would require more capital.
(if you plant commercial chili, sweetcorn that you secure contracts/agreement to send your harvest to factory for processing into maggie chili or canned mushroom at a agreed fixed price, should be considered as cash crop)

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Conclusion - IMHO

I would think that the best scenario is to own a couple 10s of acres of matured cash crop. Thurs you will not need to worry much about where your harvest should go, you just focus on increasing yield and expansion.

But not everyone will be able to own a piece of land or own it long enough for you to plant anything long term. Or not many people have enough cash to set up a farm big enough to be efficient.

I am a small starter, which aimed to be big, my thinking shall be up start in small scale and expand my business. I would opt to rent a land first(or even just go and occupy lands under high voltage cables, nobody using them anyway) and put on whatever grow up fast and easy to market to sustain myself as well as to grow. They would be short term crops. And over time, I would slowly acquire my own piece of land, put on some cash crop, as well as some intercrop hopefully they can help pay for the new land running cost.

I shall counter infertile soil with fertigation, but if the soil is okay i would go for the most basic way, technology comes in when I have capital.

And once the cash crop kicked in after 3-5 years, I would achieve an income that I would never make it by working as employee for 3-5 years, furthermore, a much greater freedom as well as more relaxing lifestyle.

This post has been edited by rexis: Mar 29 2008, 01:02 PM

we can easily identify people who are coming because people will look and stare around if you are meeting for the 1st time.

no need to reserve. what is important is EVERYONE is PUNCTUAL.
then there shouldnt be a problem.

Guys, I may not be able to come now.... Some screw-ups happened, and my whole unit is being held responsible to resolve it. Sorry... was really looking forward to it...

try your best to resolve and see how by thursday ...
would love to have you at the meeting.

Don't seem like it's something that can be resolved anytime soon... Basically involves restructuring the whole thing, reorganizing it, and implementing new protocols. Even if i put in my leave form, it may not be approved.

Hi there, yesterday evening i visit the uncle farm, and i got took some photo from his farm..anyone interested in that?might post it up if you guys interested..

Hey, just a little update on my small project.

I've started a fertigation system, but I'm not going to follow MARDI's method by using cocopeat. Instead, I'll be using my own mix of soil. Unfortunately, because of the limited time i have each day, i've yet to fully set up the system. I've planted 5 cultivars of chilies in 2 bag groups, consisting of Tabasco, Hungarian Cherry, Thai Bird's Eye, Lilac Bird's Eye, and Tepin Hybrid. In another ten bags, I'm going to plant 4 cultivars of chilies, and 1 cultivar of cherry tomatoes. The chilies are Ipoh F1, Kulai F1, Indon Kerinting, and Malaysian Bird's Eye.

Today, I managed to acquire some Yitu chili seeds, and some super hot chili seeds, which I feel is Xi'an chili. With those two, I now have a chili germplasm of 10 cultivars from various nations to work with. My current breeding plan is to improve our cultivars, namely the Malaysian Bird's Eye and Kulai/Langkap/Ipoh Reds. What I'm looking for is not just increased productivity, but also early maturity and disease resistance.

By the by, I'm terminating my garlic, potato, onion and mint development ideas. Once again, my gardener killed them all using weedicide, so since the programme keeps getting interrupted, I will stop it. Some good news is that my carrots are doing fine, and the coffee seeds i sown are starting to germinate. It has been almost 2 months since I sowed the last batch, and only now are they germinating.

MJ, hybridizing between Kulai and etc etc chili, can we call that kulai too? Or we should call it MJ Kulai?

How do i know if a chili is kulai? Oh yeah, btw, read about a "oil kulai" breed that bred by a chili planter, that guy is agriculturist degree from taiwan. He claimed that this "oil kulai" is much more resistance to disease, but the article never say anything about how to contact that guy or if hes selling seedlings etc. I think the AgriWorld has his contact.

Should buy all the kulai from different farm and sort out the stronger gene. Sound like a time consuming work.

Your coffee seeds germinated? Thats wonderful. My chili seeds all still sleeping in the sowing pot.

Went out to collect more castor seeds, the two castor trees near my house is having a fruiting boom.

Yes yes, please post them!

This post has been edited by rexis: Mar 31 2008, 08:57 AM

Haha... Not necessary to plant every single strain of Kulai, but you do need to make a lot of farm visits. And yes, breeding is quite time consuming. There are a few ways to doing breeding, one common way is to use established lines and crossing to your own selected line. Another common way is more tedious, involving selective crossings to wildtype populations.

Well, I wouldn't mind having my hybrid called that... XD.... but essentially the genetic base is still Kulai. BTW, there is one strain of Kulai which is considered the original line. Most others are either hybrids or selectively bred lines.

Oh, Taiwan agriculture sector far more advanced lar.... haha.. Oil Kulai... sounds familiar. I'd like to read that article. But from how you described, this Oil Kulai sounds like just disease tolerant, not resistant. Tolerant means still get casualties, but not as high; Resistant means the disease cannot harm the fella at all. Very rarely can get disease resistance, as pathogens are also living beings and they adapt to changes as well.

Haah... bro, it may take time... But I think if more than a month, is time to chuck it de... From my own observation, fresh seeds from ripe pods germinate within 2 days, while 6-month stored seeds or those from dried pods will take anything between 4-14 days. The old Kulai seeds I had since end of January till now not germinated, and that's only 1 year old lei... I chuck them de...

Hmm... I think I will insist of getting my leave on 5Apr... I really cannot tahan de... I found out that the mess was originally an order given by the boss and was done for a few years de... No problem time all ok; now problem come he act dunno.... And blame my unit some more...

Ps: Forgot to mention that with Kulai at least, there is no real classification available just yet. For instance, unlike say Tabasco, you can't grade the Kulai against the Scoville scale as there has not been much test done on this aspect, as far as I know. Furthermore, just basing on habit and phenotypic structure isn't a good indication of the Kulai, as many hybrids with Kulai as mother do show similar characteristics to the Kulai. The best indication is still gene marker, but that of course is too costly to consider. So the best way is still to get seeds from confirmed bloodlines, where the seed producer can provide proof of bloodline to the buyer.

This post has been edited by Michael J.: Mar 31 2008, 02:03 PM

hi there i am waiting my bro transfer me the pics, will update here as soon as i get the pics..btw what can i say is , the worm farm really clean, and wont have any stink smell

Btw where is the worm farm? Is it in Kajang? Never realized theres such farm hidden in Kajang!

So ROTiJOHN have you purchased any cacing from the worm guy yet? How was it?

so anymore joining for the gathering ?

its this coming weekend.
cant wait for it

This post has been edited by ParaOpticaL: Mar 31 2008, 08:57 PM

MJ, you are teh man, exactly that nobody can stand in our way, not even boss.

and OMG OMG OMG i got one survival here!!! My 2nd batch chili got one sprout!!!!

Survival rate... 10%

So total how many people? 7?

So method of gathering is to look for those folks with that agri shine in their eyes in nando's at the time stated above...

ermmm i can definately make it oredi
thing is horr.....i dunno nuts.. hope u guys dun mind...oh well

welcome to have you onboard...
i will be there about 15 mins early...can SMS me...

Haha... Rexis my brother, good good... in that case you better look after the fella man... 3 months later I'll be waiting to receive some fresh seeds.... XD...! So, do you still want the Tabasco seeds? Word of caution though... the fella is actually a rather huge plant. Didn't read the fine print where it said it grows to almost 5 feet....

missfroggy, don't worry lar... we all also still learning one... Ancora Imparo mar...

Ok then, see you guys this Saturday.

bro am i reading this right ?

YOU are COMING ?

yep i am.... why the expression lar? o.O?

Hi here is the pic i promise to post up last few days.

The earthworm farm


The container with cow poo,it don have smell at all..very clean


Earthworm condo, use to produce the earthworm here


The vermicompost pool..