Initially I was very interested in starting a gaharu farm. The numbers quoted were all very impressive. Big numbers of selling prices were mentioned. In Sarawak, I was told that inoculation per tree starts at RM250 per tree where as in Sabah I saw in the Net RM100 per tree. I do not know whether this inoculation is Prof Blanchette CA kit or not or some other proprietary process. No sellers of the inoculation kit offers a guarantee of X% of success and of what grade and qty of agarwood will result. Conservatively do you think you can sell for RM1000 per tree? So your expected profit after 7 years will be (Selling price x no of trees infected) - (cost of seedlings-fertilisers - cost of labour and etc to get to harvesting stage - inoculation - land cost- financing cost) x 100% tree planted. The numbers don't seem so sexy.

However, after stating all that, I can make an economic case if a) you have idle land b) you can find a cheap way to inoculate c) cheap ad hoc labour to tend to the plantation from time to time.

Lastly find a seller who is willing to buy at your expected price. Unless there is an open and fair way to dispose of this wood, you will be subjected to "mafia" pricing. ie take it or leave it. For me, I probably will embark it as an experiment. Plant a few trees, inoculate it with different kits, compare results. If at the end of the experiment and you stumble upon THE magic formula, you don't need to plant trees. Just sell the kit. It is more lucrative. If one inoculation kit doesn't work, you can still try other kits as long as the tree remains alive. You can google all you want, till now I haven;t come across anyone BUYING your raw wood in Malaysia. Sellers are a plenty.

When there's a deadly silence, it means 2 things: either they are raking in millions and hoping to keep it quiet or nursing their wounds. Even the respective state governments seems to be awfully quiet on this during the last 2 years. I suspect it is a no go. Otherwise this will be trumpeted and every street corner will be talking about this. I went back to Sarawak a few times recently and so far street gossip says it is not a success. And a number of local gaharu blogs seems to be rather quiet too on new developments except the ones on selling the inoculations or the seeds/saplings.

What I'd really really like to know is how those guys in Thailand /Vietnam are doing with their gaharu plantations. If they can make it work, it means somewhere there is a viable biz model. My interest remains but more of an academic intellectual kind of thing until there is light at the end of the tunnel. My personal take on this is that unless farmers can produce at least grade B wood which I guess takes more than 7 years, waiting 2 to 3 years after inoculation isn't going to make it. How many farmers can wait that long to see some returns?

And even if we are able to come up with the magic formula and sell the inoculation kits, unless there is an overall feasible biz model, you will eventually run out of people to sell it to. No gaharu planters, no inoculation kit market.