MJ, didnt meet Praba as i believe he is based in KL

went direct to the nursery as it was 3 plots away from 1 of my land...and met the PIC Yoga. Nice chap...and coincident we stay quite near to each other in Cheras...lolx


They are selling at RM 2.00 for each plant about 2-3 months old. i dont know if its cheap or expensive as it seems there is a shortage around n9 area.

Hexagon is selling at RM 2.50

Para:

It is close to that price. Hexagon's price is a little on the high side though; maybe due to certain unique traits. Did you check with them about it?

UP sells for RM1.80, but you need to go all the way to Perak to collect it yourself. If large quantities, maybe worth it lar.

Oh yes, before these, we were worrying about shortage of water. Now we are worrying of too much water. We had some floods here, some of of chillies are drown, 2 beds for green vege too (but was harvested in time) and some Cavendish Banana. Lost (in $) isn't much, it's the hard work that was wasted. Luckily we did not plant much, close to the waterline of the creek.
Had to dig a drain to drain off some excess water.

Sorry, had not been able to find any leads. Have absolutely no idea what it is. Maybe shall have to wait till I go to Lembaga Getah's main office.
Since our "amputation" , last check 2 days ago, there had not been any changes, no signs of any new growth, but it does seems to looks even "dryer". Hope it'll get well soon.

Sorry missed the topic. What plant is going for $1.80 to $2.50? Seems cheap. Here everything is expensive, but selling our produce is cheap .

We had an outbreak of chilli disease here. Came with the rainy season. Affecting our whole area here.

bro,

we were referring to Berangan Banana Plants


MJ, the guy answering my query at Hexagon was not too friendly thus he didnt give me much info on way their plants are more expensive.

whereas the guy at Jalur Salju invited me in for a chat...i went in to kaypoh...haha

Hmmh, over here we have a guy doing it in his "laboratory" (Shoplot), going for $3.50 (no discount for quantity). Need to book, or wait till his schedule. Also it's a small one (plant). Resorting to suckling transplant. Had planted some, mostly for sucklings.

By the way, what planting density are you doing?

What pricing are we looking at the fruits there?
Still working on the feasibility/market study.
Any infor to share?

backyard lab also going for RM 3.50 each. its tissue cultured ??

i am planting 10' x 10'

pricing wise for each KG have to let you know next week

Oh yes, cost here are not cheap, maybe land are still available. Yes, backyard Tissue cultured. I see his equipment are just very basic.

I've seen people planting @ 6 X 10'. Me, am also thinking of 10~15' X 10 ~ 15'. Doing it wider, to integrate other plants in the middle.

Over here, I heard wholesale market price is $1.50/ kg. I sold 2 brunch, only managed @ $1.00. Hope you have better pricing over there.

Hi guys, My boss just started to import LIVE Soon Hock fish/ Marble goby from South East Asia and planning to supply to local market with cheaper price. but i have no idea where and how to market my product. Can anyone recommend any live seafood supplier to me? thanks a lot.

Mr Farmer:

It's simply a case of low competition. Over here, there are 80+ banana tissue culture labs, or tissue culture labs that could go into banana tissue culture easily. I believe in Sabah and Sarawak, there are probably only a dozen or so in each state. And tissue culturing bananas isn't rocket science; that's why a lot of biotech/science graduates are going into the business. But what really "adds-value" to the end product is how much mutation happens in the clones, if the tc lab can continuously improve the quality of the materials, and how well managed is the lab.

Another possible (though unlikely) factor is the type of clone. Cavendish clones are fetching pretty high prices these days as the South American plantations are gradually shrinking and international trade demand is being filled-in from Malaysia, Philippines, and Hainan Island. However, even berangan clones are getting higher prices these days.

As for prices, whoa! So low? Which grade bunches did you sell? Over here, a typical 15-18kg bunch Grade A (between 10-12 combs) would fetch about RM1.80 per kg, Grade B about RM1.30, and Grade C about RM0.80 (usually wholesalers don't take these).

Hmm... We used to plant between 550 to 600 stands per acre for berangan. That's about 6' x 6' planting, if I remember correctly. The target is to get between 1500-1600 stands per hectare

Most probably so on the (low) competition, and / or low volume, hence high price.
As for the price, we sold it to wholesaler, claiming that they resell it @ $1.20/kg. Not sure about the grading. Those 2 were a small brunch maybe 7 ~ 8 kg each. We cut it to comb and got about 15kg. Still, it's better price than the Goreng Pisang, Pisang Kerling & Raja.
Btw how do we grade banana? ( all types?)

Was talking with a guy and found that there is people renting land just to plant Berangan. Wonder if this is feasible. Guess the 1st year is at a lost.

Mr Farmer:

Hmm... RM1.20 wholesaler price? Maybe another case of high supply and low demand.

Grading is primarily done through weight, which include the stalk weight, the number of combs per bunch, and size of the top 5-6 combs (depends). Each variety has it's own grading scale, so eg. berangan fetches premium prices for bunches above 20kg with 12-15 combs, and >15cm fingers, while for pisang tanduk it usually by weight and number of fingers (>3.5kg, >10 fingers = premium).

As for renting land and plant berangan, it can be very profitable. It all depends on your costings, actually. For eg., I used to have this client for tc banana who rented land from TNB for RM100/hectare a month, and he rented about 100 hectares in total. His average revenue per hectare is about RM40,000 so each year he gets RM4million from his bananas. However, he also related some very bad incidences where he rented land from a government agency, and just before he could harvest his crop, the agency terminated the contract and took back the land (plus crops). Compensation was the rental fees for the 10 hectares of only RM12,000 (as in the contract), but his loss in revenue was almost RM410,000. This does not include losses for planting the crop, labor etc.

In other words, make sure you have a strong liability clause in your contract with the landowner, eg. a business disruption compensation clause.

Yes, 1st year usually you shouldn't expect absolute profits, but the first crop is also normally the best. If you do get it right the first time, you could see about 80% premium crops; do take note, as the years go by, the quality of the crop will drop despite fertilizer applications etc. Also, if your area is unlucky, you could have fusarium setting in within 3 years, making future cultivation almost impossible.

This is really a good motivation news. Shall look into this once I finished off my current work.

Mr Farmer:

Sounds like you are planning something serious.

I feel I need to put a qualifier here: you have to have good distribution network if you want to fetch the best prices possible. Using the example above, 100 hectares will give on average 2,250,000kg of banana crop. If on average a medium sized fruit vendor would take in 10 bunches (ie around 100 combs) a week, at 15kg per bunch, you would thus need to find 3,750 buyers to take up 150kg of banana each week for a month. Wholesalers would normally give pretty low prices, but they would easily take up 1,000kg each week, but you would still need to find more than 500 wholesalers.

Of course, if you can export like the guy above, then your problem is not as bad lar. But really, the No.1 issue for rapidly perishable crop such as banana is marketing and logistics. Next is quality and quantity.

No worries, not looking at such a massive project. Just starting with a small acreage and some fringe of land in the rubber plantation (perimeter). Already have some (mix) banana planted in between young rubber plant-lets. Production is so little and inconsistent as we are transplanting the sucklings. So I started to went around collecting from other planters.

Spoke with a land owner who told me that there is this family (business) that specialize in planting and selling banana wholesale. They go around their area renting up all idle land to plant banana. Hence I got this idea and started looking into this. Shall start converting a 2 acres land to plant just banana for trial 1st.

Yes, wholesaler pays lower, but on the bright side we found 3 who takes all our produce and pays cash as soon as we download. We do not have that much banana anyway and they also take our other products like tapioca, pumpkins, Sukun, Avocado & etc.

Also from my experience Banana is still better than green vegetables (perishable), which can easily go for about a week or more.
You are absolutely right, and from my experience too, Production, Marketing, Logistic, Quality & Quantity. Having to move forward and backward in between to fine tune, before moving forward again.

It's not easy to be a farmer

Mr Farmer:

Haa... 1 week is still considerably perishable lar. Unless the produce has been specially stored, like apples. Had some heads-up from this professor in UNIMAS, about how post-harvest handling and storage is done in Australia. He had the privilege of getting an inside peek. Didn't know that most of the apples in the market today have been stored for at least 2 years in specialized freezers.

---

Added on December 16, 2011, 8:30 amAnyway, we've been talking so much about crop cultivation, aquaculture and livestock seems neglected.

Anyone has anything to share about those areas? The only things I have is about what's going on in the Malaysian aquaculture industry in the next 2 years. Apparently, there are about a half dozen huge projects (in the scale of RM100 million each) involving foreign investments into aquaculture in Malaysia. Most of them are in shrimp, some in marine finfish. And they aren't just doing grow-out, but the entire value chain, from production of fries to final packaging. The big guys are interested at contract farming some parts of their operations, but they want people with good technical background or ability to learn and apply what they teach (the companies will provide training to interested parties).

This post has been edited by Michael J.: Dec 16 2011, 08:30 AM

I'm interested on agriculture after I got myself back from New Zealand. I wonder will it be any gathering happen coming?

Boy:

A gathering of any sort will depend on many factors. Like if it is a peaceful gathering, or not (heh).

Anyway, could you share what so impressed you in New Zealand?

ps: Speaking of New Zealand, did you guys know they are actively culturing our udang galah there? There's even this one place where they not only show you how it is done, but have an attached restaurant where visitors and come, choose their prawns, and have it cooked up and served in a variety of ways. Just begs to question, if the "ang mohs" can do it so damn well in a freakin cold-climate country, what the heck are our people here doing.