Good for Mr. Wu, or is it Hu? For him, it looks like his move to Canada was an entrance to the “land of opportunity”, and I’m glad for him.

Now lets watch how long it takes for a call to come for others to jump onto the same bandwagon. Or, as it gets more and more crowded, to still try to follow it.

You know, that one the late British financier and corporate raider, Sir James Goldsmith, once opined about regarding those who’d follow it :- “If you can SEE the bandwagon, it’s already too late”.

And ruin what Wu, or Hu, started. As we flood the market in China with countless containers of cubed alfalfa diverted there off every acre here that can yield a crop. And then complain bitterly about the ever rising price of milk and beef in the supermarket, while our farmers still wail about not being able to cover their costs. Including all those who went into farming alfalfa for export.

It sounds like he has simply gone back to baling the crop like in the old days, small square bales that can be tossed by hand instead of the big round ones you need a piece of equipment to move. What is new is old, see it everyday.

Sorry Queen Green appears your to late
again.
Cheers

Like I said about thirty years ago, we should allow over here about 5,000 Japanese. Give them about ten thousand acres and then learn from them what they can do wtih it.

I do believe it would really open our eyes to possibilities that we have but cannot see.

Here is a good example of someone with their eyes and ears wide open. I wish him all success.

We blindly allow raw log exports and so many other raw resources that there is no good reason why every single British Columbian couldn’t have a job.
Nothing should leave this country without being processed at least to some degree.
Its only common sense. (Which isn’t so common it seems.)

I agree with **But** . Shipping in smaller bales, so that they can be handled manually is not new, however it does allow for a more concentrated load in a container, and for manual unloading, and shipping.

Trucking the hay to Prince George to load into containers add an additional cost for trucking and handling, which means that he will have to get a good price to make a dollar.

Because of the increase in lumber sales to the USA there should be sufficient empty containers available in Prince George to accomodate this kind of business, however if the shipping of lumber in containers falls off dramatically because of the US Market, then loading the occasional container of hay in Prince George becomes cost prohibitive.

It would be interesting to know what volume Mr Wu is talking about. A standard 40ft container would only take about 20 Tonnes of hay, so unless there is a significant volume to get the best possible rates, and a really good price for the hay in China, I dont see this as a viable operation.

Lets see what happens.

The analysts commenting above seem to have overlooked a couple of salient facts stated in the article on the export of alfalfa;

“a traditional bale of alfalfa, reduce it in size and also compress it”

Sounds to me like they will be compressing the bales to squeeze out all the air. However they do it, the moisture content will want to be low, to prevent fermentation, unless silage is their game.
metalman.

metalman, it may well be that the alflafa will be ‘cubed’, i.e., compressed into a dense, small cube which is then capable of being handled in bulk as a somewhat free-flowing commodity. Without any hand loading of the traditional type of hay bales most are familiar with into the containers whatsoever. John Deere, for one, has manufactured machinery for putting up alfalfa this way for years. The container could be unloaded in China by shoveling the cubes out, either by hand, or with a front end loader on a small tractor.

I’d wager there aren’t very many Japanese who would be willing to try to make their living over here through small farming anymore, Give more.

East Indians have taken that up, in the Fraser Valley and elsewhere, and are emulating what the Japanese and Chinese market gardeners of old used to do so well.

A very successful Chinese market gardener I knew quite well, one who seemed to have a extraordinary ‘green thumb’ in making his land produce top quality produce (and right when it would fetch the best price, too, before everyone else had their crops ready for market), once told me that there was simply no future in what he had done so long so well.

Each year what he could retrieve in price shrank ever closer to what he laid out in costs. He finally gave up, battled his prime piece of growing land with its deep alluvial soil out of the ALR, (after first leasing it to another ‘western’ farmer who thought he could make a go of it, but couldn’t), and a subdivision of townhouses now graces the site.

I see your point Socred, and concede that your supposition may well be correct.
I am familiar with a couple of compressed alfalfa products available here, it is conceivable that the export product is as simple as one of those.
metalman.