Yes, rearing egg duck is profitable, especially when u process them into salted duck egg, longer shelf life, high price. And there is demand.

There is an issue of the AgriWorld talk about a guy who rear ducks.

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1 hectare hv 100 trees, 12 acres = 4.8 hectare, so 480 trees.

But again, planting this kind of crop is not going to be easy for fresh starter, you have to wait for at least 5 years for the tree to kick in peak production. How u survive in that 5 years?

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Added on April 7, 2008, 6:27 pm
Farm disease and sickness control

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Behind the beautiful halo of agriculture, the whooping estimated return figures, the beautiful plants and handsome truck lots of harvest, there is always the dark side, like my dad say, UK sound great, but when he went to London, he feel like crying.

So one of the devil that is eating up your nett profit is plant disease and sickness. Note that I do not mean pest here - at least you can see those nasty caterpillars, fruit flies and mites eating up your precious harvest and you can have some clue on what is causing your loss and act accordingly. Sometimes, your plant is showing really strange behavior, nothing on it but they just doesn't looks healthy, or fruit dropping, or some part just rotten, or the whole thing just died mysteriously.

There is a few thing you should check when you facing similar issue, the soil, the water, the weather, the nutrient and the plant itself as well as study the history of your land and the surrounding.

the first one is soil:
have you did any lab test on your soil(which should be done BEFORE you plant anything)? Were your plants have sufficient nutrient? Is the soil suitable? Is the pH level correct?

water:
where did you got your water from? Is it from a steam passing thru some other farm/facility? Or is it ground water?

the weather:
Is the crop burnt by sunlight? Is any shade netting required? Is it raining season? Is there any flooding or water logging?

the nutrient:
Are you using the correct fertilizer? For organic fertilizer, are your fertilizer properly fermented? Could your organic fertilizer carrying disease? Did you supplement the correct micronutrient? Or did you over fertilized your crop?

the plant:
Get samples of sick plants and send for lab test, or show to fertilizer/seed supplier, they will have a clue. Is the plant sick due to environment? Or is it a kind of virus/fungus?

The land:
What is the land being used for previously? Why the previous owner stop his business? Is it a virgin land? Is there any farm nearby that can transfer the disease?

The important thing to work out a farm is you must monitor your farm properly, dont let your worker do all your job. Whenever you spotted anything suspicious, act immediately. Like instantly dig out the entire plant and burn it, or immediately consult a professional regarding your findings.

Also, do not over stress your land. Let it rest after a cycle. As in nature, every life form suppress each other to reach a perfect balance. If we want to balance things up, the land need to take a break. Also, do crop rotation, switch with different crop. For example, if a land has planted sweetcorn for too long, a lot of pest and disease that adapted to attack sweetcorn will start to settle down in that land. If we switch to say, cassava, sweetcorn pest will die due to lack of food.

Farming is not as easy as just lay the seeds and wait.

The above is a very general on where to look into whenever your farm is stuck by a sickness and you losing harvest. There are details which I yet to have time to look into. I am not going to go into anatomy of the virus etc etc, those you have to go and read agri text book.

This post has been edited by rexis: Apr 7 2008, 06:38 PM

Hm... if we want to start small on vermicompost, where can we start from(Of cause getting the worms!)? I mean where to sell our source of final product fertiliser.

If using RM300,000.00 (IF I HAVE!) i would definately go big like this, but If we can start from RM300.00, that is a very good price for beginner to start with.

I think 1kg worms can be multiply very fast once your worm is settle and love the enviroment you create for them.

Any where to join venture of vermicompost business?

hi, i myself is quite interested in Agriculture & Aquaculture, will keep an eye on this thread and hopefully there is a chance to meet up in the future.

MODERN FARMING

KW, i think theres a local banana plantation that use light aeroplane to spray pesticide.

Welcome on board, hopefully you find the informations useful. Feel free to shooting question as there will be sifu here willing to give comments.

If I have RM300,000 then seriously there will be lots more better choice available. I would go into vegetable production, with RM300k i can utilize biotech and greenhouse and fertigation and produce high quality products.

Anyhow, vermiculture has yet to set firm in local market. But the potential is there, the next thing is up to how you establish it.

When one doing a business, you always need to do marketing for your own business, same with farming, or vermiculture. I mean, how do you sell your products? In the case, vermicompost as organic fertilizer. First you identify your customers, then, you approach them and make them aware of your product, then, close sales. It is a marketing issue here.

So who would need vermicompost here? Firstly, home gardeners, we have plenty of people around here that owns a garden, and they willing to spend on something that make their garden healthy. Then, it is the organic farmers, they will usually require larger supply compare to normal gardener. Basically the market pie of fertilizer is there, it is up to you to grab a slice from it.

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And so, you would like to start small on vermiculture, there is very simple ways to start from:

- learn about vermiculture
- make worm bins
- buy worms
- grow your worms
- expand and harvest
- market your harvest

Where do you learn about vermiculture? To success, you have to master your skill, and properly done your homework. Internet has tons of vermiculture resources and there are a community of vermiculture over the internet, they are more then willing to share what they know. Lately, I just find out that there are local vermiculture operators that organize training course for vermiculture.

How much do we need to make worm bins? You can do it as cheap as less then RM30 rather then RM300k. Very very easy, get a plastic container(Jaya Jusco sell less then RM15 for a big one, Carefour might goes lower, you can even use those cheap plastic dustbin) and fill it with water soaked shredded old newspaper(almost cost nothing). Drill ventilation holes all over the lid. Then the bin is ready to go and just wait for you to put in the worms!

You can get your first batch of worms from a local vermiculture farm, usually people find this challenging a few years back because nobody is doing vermiculture locally in Malaysia, but now, there is a few supplier available and it is possible to purchase compost worm directly, it goes like RM300-400 per kg of fresh and lively earthworms. OR, just dig some garden worm and try them out, this is usually recommended by official.

About how to grow your worms, you can try googling around the internet, I am sure there is plenty of guidelines about how and what you should or should not feed your earthworms, and how to keep them happy and healthy. Seriously, from internet, you can find much much more info about breeding earthworm then growing oil palm. Basically you do not need to spend much in feeding your earthworm, as they eat organic waaste.

After your worms settle down, and your worm colony growing, and you have meaningful scale(like you can produce 100 package of compost monthly), its time for you to harvest and expand. Harvest and bag your compost, and this will be your product, get more worm bin ready so that you can accommodate more worms and therefore your future harvest will increase.

Market your harvest! Make money from it. You can do direct selling to your neighbour, or have a visit on the local grocery shop see if they interested to put it in their shop, for the commercial prospect like farmers or even plantations, you need to have higher scale and volume(like 1 tons per week production).

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This is just a plain guidelines, for the details, each of them can expand into a full article.
(i got two supplier for earthworm if u interested, u can PM me, I want to buy, but not 1kg tat much, perhaps we can share. But not now, I yet to hv time to establish things)

Thanks for your very valueable sharing.

Let me plan on the where to place my worm bin and the worms should live for coming few yrs. I am organic gardener for passed 8yrs, I am making my own compost, growing vegetables in organic form, I think I should hv study enough about vermicompost for the passed 8 yrs. The only thing I not sure about is the fermentation level that needed by the worms.

Native worms/garden earthworm will not do a fast job/great job for vermicompost, those worm eat very slowly and little. If we need to go for vermicompost no matter is small or big set up, we go for the proper vermicompost worms. Tiger worms is very very suitable for us as beginner to start with, it more adapt to our climate compare with Lumbricus rubellus which is more productive.

When I am ready will PM you for sharing half kg of worms. I am not welling to start with 1kg, if not i start long ago...

This post has been edited by Chinchillas: Apr 9 2008, 04:07 PM

interesting topics on vermiculture, will experiment with a small scale of breeding according to some internet tips and how to.

has anyone got any live pictures of worm breeding?

You are most welcomed.

An organic farmer! It is such an honor to have you here. Feel free to post around here.

About the the ripeness of the vermicompost, it is generally described as "dark and odorless or earthy smell", that means it is ready. IMHO, to be sure, you can keep the harvested compost for a period, while make sure no decomposing occur(like internal temperature change, etc, just like making regular compost).

True, local garden worms, not to say they cant do it, people just say that they cant do it fast enough, while I have yet to make any real life comparison with local and tiger worm. I have tried to keep garden soil worm(dig them out and make them a home) and they hv survived in captivity(worm bin) for more then six months, they grew bigger size and they produced capsules. In the process, some dying occurred but those who survived, is going to do very well. The worms are released to the wild due to complaints.

I am very interested how tiger worm can do better then that.

Why? To stimulate your appetite?

Here is some good banner to put in your siggy thou

I am not talking about the ripeness of the vermicompost or the finish product-worms casting , I am talking about the food that need to feed the worms it had to be composted before feeding them, it work very fast in this way.

A field trip for vermicompost?

Though I'm not in the agriculture field, interested in exploring conservation of the environment for our future generations.

Going Organic looks like a good way.

Rexis, he meant the level of decomposition of the vegetative matter. You really can't expect the worms to gobble up a whole lettuce leaf mar.... haha.....

Mmm... Worm are detritivores actually. However, given they don't have teeth, and have to rely of the muscular breakdown on materials in their gizzard, it really makes sense that a certain level of decomposition must take place before giving them to the worms. But in my opinion, if there is a scheduled feeding system at the right ratio, then it don't matter about the level of decomposition, as the breakdown is fast anyway. Anyhow, the worms will go for the older materials first. If I remember correctly, the ratio was 2:1, for every 1 sqft space. This means 2kg worms is needed for every 1kg organic material consumed every week per square foot area. It is better to have a lower amount of organic matter than to overload the system.

Oh! That is something new for me! Feed composted stuff to earthworms.

Yeah, like MJ mentioned, earthworms go for rotten stuff first, as they do not hv the teeth to chew them up.

That would explain why the hell did my cabbage stayed in the worm bin for one whole week before i remove it

News: another type of Composting using Bacteria , was more faster
Coz Bacteria double X2 every 20min

VS

Two pounds of worms, approximately 2000 of them, will eat one pound of compost every 48 hours

This post has been edited by kianwei8: Apr 13 2008, 10:08 PM

Yeah, there is another agri magazine recommend to compost with bacteria too rather with worms. I was trying to find out what is the difference between regular compost and worm compost(rather then having a bit of extra protein supply).

I have read about a method to cultivate vegetable on elevated bed/tray, the method is similar to the strawberry farms in cameron highland, but they put compost on the tray and even practice crop rotation on the elevated compost. It is said that by keeping away from the soil, you can prevent a number of diseases.

A friend has told me about a farmer from Kelantan "gantung" all his chili up, coz to prevent soil borne disease.

some Pic during My Cameron Study Trip

Replying to KW's thread located here in the investment forum.

Bacteria is traditional composting method,which is command use now day. It very simple, but to maintain THAT bacteria to be active and ALIVE for composting, you need to flip your compost every other days, that call hot compost. No matter what method, eventually you will still have compost regardless of time = let material rot.

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Added on April 14, 2008, 2:41 pmBeautiful picture, those strawberry can only fruit in high land or coolest weather. If I stay in cameron, I AM SURE I WILL GROW lot of strawberry!

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Added on April 14, 2008, 2:49 pmVery true. Keep your crop from the soil can avoid many diseases especially on our climate. But that can be not true as well. But keep certain crop away from RAIN, is the best way from cotrolling disease. Most of the farmer will use rotation method to fix fertility of the soil, eg.some crop can fix the soil which is lack of N, but other will withdraw fully the N.

Those grow in tray/grow beg or compost media, they are very much well manage their NPK level for that particular crop, they not water just with plain water, they water compost tea or seaweed extract or worm casting tea.

Both bacteria and worms composting is really good for the soil, it just composting using bacteria need to be in HOT compost, not cold compost. Cold compost finishing will not have much nutritien value compare with hot compost.

This post has been edited by Chinchillas: Apr 14 2008, 02:54 PM

Mmm.... Just got back from Cameron Highlands. Was not very impressed with most of the farms. The only thing that really impressed me was how they managed to keep the hill zone farms functional despite the steepness of the slope. Oh, and also the orang asli village.

Interesting note about the rain borne disease part. Yet seeing how countries like Thailand, China, and Indon can produce high quality perishable produce with rain-feeding method tells somethings else... Well ya, they do use heavy amounts of chemicals, but that's what you get from the Green Revolution.

Strawberries... Not very true... Commercial trials have already shown success in cultivating strawberries in lowland areas. Kelantan has shown good results. Same thing with grapes. Almost anyone you ask would tell you grapes need to be cultivated under cooling weather, when in reality grapes has part of its cultivation origin traced to Egypt. I've grown both grapes and strawberries in Sepang on a hobby scale, and they have born good fruits. If anyone knows Sepang well enough, they would know how scorching hot it can be.

Speaking of the elevated bed/tray method, saw that too at Cameron. Vegetables looked really nice, but as bro Chinchillas pointed out, they really managed the inputs very well to get those results.

To me, I would be in favour of something like that. Not because of disease or anything like that, but more of control and management. It is far more easier and efficient to do quality control on your produce if done that way. Right from the start, you are delivering equal inputs to all your crops, assuming you're using crop of uniform profiles of course.

Ah... Then I wan to visit the strawberry farm in Sepang! See weather it taste sweet or sour.

Strawberry farm in Sepang? Where got strawberry farm in Sepang? That is in Kelantan lar..... The Sepang one (Selangor) was my own hobby planting, and no they were not excessively sour, nor were they extremely sweet. Still good nonetheless.

The sweetness/quality of fruit can be manipulated under the right conditioning, eg. fertilizer inputs, soil pH, water KH, solar intensity etc. Of course, it is easier to cultivate certain crops if the right conditions are available at hand, then there are just a few parameters to play with. But if given no such easily available conditions, then the modern agriculturist has to get the crop to adapt, or adapt themselves to the conditions.

Just one example, cocoa. In the past, every planter swore that cocoa is a shade crop, requiring minimal shade reduction over time, and if exposed to too much sunlight, will not thrive. Why? Simply because cocoa was from the Amazon rainforest, and grew amongst the midland forest regions where light intensity was at median. However in Tawau, cocoa is planted bare, without shade trees, and yet they are one the highest cocoa producing places in the world, and they produce some of the finest cocoa in the world too. How could this be? The agriculturist who did it made the crop adapt; That same agriculturist also adapted as well.

Change is inevitable; to move forward, change must happen. Isaac Newton once stated that no one can be a mere observer, for even the observer is a participant of a given system. No one observes something without imprinting an effect on that thing, and thereby changing it.