Second hand farm impliments wanted for cash !!

[Huggybearman]

9 hours ago, manofthecoldland said:

I am not quite sure what that entails here re planting methods. On different videos I see different methods, depending on the country and possibly many other factors of which i am unaware. 

There are large fice fields throughout the province, but near my house where I have watched the process now for many years are only small rice fields. 

What I see is the first tilling (last few weeks now that heavy rains have softened the field soils) to rough plow the field leaving a  mixture of turf and old growth. This is done by contract by a man with a walk behind motorized tiller you see on sale at the agribusiness shops. The land sits awhile. When the heavier rains muck things up, the field is plowed again once or twice until the old growth is driven under for green fertilizer, I believe.  Then a carabao is brought in with a beam leveler to flatten the area. It becomes a muddy flat surface.

Now here is the part that for some reason I have always missed witnessing..... the actual seeding. What I do know is that I do NOT see rows of workers planting young seedlings by hand here. I see that in other videos, but not here. The fields must be broadcast sown or walking seed scattered with a carried mechanism. I don't really know. But a few weeks after leveling..... the fields start greening with the new crop.  I did see a fellow hand planting some young seedlings on a few bare spots that weren't seeded for some reason. This was done the traditional way, but I have never witnessed teams of seedling planters here close to my house. I have seen it while traveling outside the immediate area enroute to distant places.

When the fields are ready for harvest, small contract teams of hand reapers cut and lay it, and a small thresher is brought into the field, with sieves and a blower fan. The palay is sacked and taken away and everyone disappears. The harvesting is done very quickly with not very many people. Again, these are small plots.

From what I see here around me, it does not seem labor intensive, but that may only apply to these very small, semi-urban plots.

I would like to learn more if anyone on the forum owns and oversees larger fields. I will have to ask some of my expat friends whose wives own fields nearby. The subject never comes up, so my curiosity is tweaked.

Occasionally I see someone spraying, either pesticides or fertilizer.... but they are expensive and not always used as in richer countries.

My wife has about 3 hectares of rice paddy. Finding laborers used to be quite easy, but not in the last couple of years. The days of planting individual seedlings are long gone, certainly around here. Now the method is ‘broadcast’ seeding where the seeds are just spread by hand. Very wasteful and not very efficient, but certainly cheaper. We changed to hybrid seeds a couple of years ago, which ideally should be raised in a nursery bed and after a couple of weeks transplanted individually into the prepared rice paddy. Ideally these seedlings should be planted, one to a 30cm square area. But the labor cost required to do that completely negated the increased yield. 
At harvest time labor is easier to find as they get a percentage of the harvest, which is not bad money for them. 
But at other times, labor is very difficult to find. Generally the system is very antiquated and as a consequence is very inefficient.

There are mechanical transplanters and combine harvester available, but these are very expensive and generally way beyond the aspirations of typical farmers here.

Until the DOA step in and organize some sort of system to mechanize the process, like Thailand for example, which has a very efficient agricultural system, then things are unlikely to change.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Huggybearman

[earthdome]

10 hours ago, manofthecoldland said:

I am not quite sure what that entails here re planting methods. On different videos I see different methods, depending on the country and possibly many other factors of which i am unaware. 

There are large fice fields throughout the province, but near my house where I have watched the process now for many years are only small rice fields. 

What I see is the first tilling (last few weeks now that heavy rains have softened the field soils) to rough plow the field leaving a  mixture of turf and old growth. This is done by contract by a man with a walk behind motorized tiller you see on sale at the agribusiness shops. The land sits awhile. When the heavier rains muck things up, the field is plowed again once or twice until the old growth is driven under for green fertilizer, I believe.  Then a carabao is brought in with a beam leveler to flatten the area. It becomes a muddy flat surface.

Now here is the part that for some reason I have always missed witnessing..... the actual seeding. What I do know is that I do NOT see rows of workers planting young seedlings by hand here. I see that in other videos, but not here. The fields must be broadcast sown or walking seed scattered with a carried mechanism. I don't really know. But a few weeks after leveling..... the fields start greening with the new crop.  I did see a fellow hand planting some young seedlings on a few bare spots that weren't seeded for some reason. This was done the traditional way, but I have never witnessed teams of seedling planters here close to my house. I have seen it while traveling outside the immediate area enroute to distant places.

When the fields are ready for harvest, small contract teams of hand reapers cut and lay it, and a small thresher is brought into the field, with sieves and a blower fan. The palay is sacked and taken away and everyone disappears. The harvesting is done very quickly with not very many people. Again, these are small plots.

From what I see here around me, it does not seem labor intensive, but that may only apply to these very small, semi-urban plots.

I would like to learn more if anyone on the forum owns and oversees larger fields. I will have to ask some of my expat friends whose wives own fields nearby. The subject never comes up, so my curiosity is tweaked.

Occasionally I see someone spraying, either pesticides or fertilizer.... but they are expensive and not always used as in richer countries.

For my inlaws I recall my wife mentioning how much she hated planting the rice, I expect these were seedlings being planted. My inlaws small rice fields are up in the mountains so I expect that they do more work by hand because of the poor logistics to move equipment in the mountains.

[JJReyes]

The Philippine method is replanting young rice stalks from nurseries to flooded paddies in neat, well spaced rows. It is very labor intensive. Japan does something similar except their farmers use small, one person mechanical equipment both for planting and harvesting. The Japanese equipment is increasingly becoming popular in Thailand, Myanmar, etc. In Texas, we drove alongside flooded rice paddies that are 800 to 2,000 acres in size. My wife and I watched biplanes spraying seeds. I am pretty sure the agriculture corporations that own the fields and biplanes likewise use huge mechanical equipment for harvesting.

Agrarian reform in the Philippines limited agriculture land ownership to small plots. This was a political move and the result was gross inefficiency. The farmers can hardly grow enough rice on their plot to feed their families, much less others. They end up going into heavy debt to buy seeds and to buy food until harvest time. The results are farmers looking for better jobs in the city.

To make up for the rice shortfall, the Philippines buys rice from Thailand, Myanmar, etc. where the harvest is more bountiful (larger plots) and more efficient (cheaper to produce). What's needed are larger size agriculture plots and the use of mechanical equipment. Unfortunately, this is not politically acceptable in the Philippines.

Edited June 16, 2020 by JJReyes

[scott h]

1 hour ago, JJReyes said:

Agrarian reform in the Philippines limited agriculture land ownership to small plots. This was a political move and the result was gross inefficiency.

I have been saying this for years. Going from the (i believe) larges rice exporter in se asia under Marcos to the largest importer. 

1 hour ago, JJReyes said:

They end up going into heavy debt to buy seeds and to buy food until harvest time

Or they sell thier plots to large property development firms, who then purposely ruin the irrigation dikes, wait a few years then build a sub-division. Take a drive from Manila to Tagayatay and you will see what i mean.