Seeds of hope in the South

Seeds of hope in the South

Business is stable for Narathiwat nursery delivering rare palms and cacti

Narathiwat, one of the three restive southernmost provinces, may frighten some visitors away because of violence by insurgents and attacks on villagers, teachers, state officials and even Buddhist monks.

Mr Kitti with his collection of cacti, which covers about one rai of land. His nursery is the largest cactus garden in the South and the province is promoting the garden as Narathiwat’s new eco-tourism magnet.

But for Valentinepanmai nursery, set up 26 years ago by a plant lover with an engineering educational background, business is flourishing.

Delivery of its seedlings and young sprouts, mainly for ornamental indigenous palms and cactus, is handled by Thailand Post, the State Railway of Thailand and other operators to all destinations nationwide.

Social media is helping the nursery in the border town of Sungai Kolok to stay closer to potential buyers and plant lovers.

“We had planned to deliver our young plants to anywhere the buyer wanted before the violence and the arrival of social media,” said founder Kitti Wangthammang.

“We began doing this in 1993 with advertisements in the local newspaper. Later we jumped on the bandwagon of social media to push our sales. Now, thanks to broadband and high-speed internet, our sales channels are much more accessible.”

Mr Kitti founded the nursery in 1988 after he decided to quit working for a construction company in Bangkok, where he had been for almost eight years, and return to his hometown with his wife, a nurse.

Back in Narathiwat, he tried the construction and contractor business. It did not fare as well as he had hoped, as Narathiwat is a small and rainy province where the construction sector is relatively small.

He then shifted to agriculture and saw the nursery business as a promising venture, especially if it became big enough for economies of scale. But, more importantly, Narathiwat is a province rich in biodiversity, ranging from longong to ornamental palms.

“Construction is a cumbersome business and you’ve got to deal with customers who always fuss around before the job is delivered, while we see agriculture as a safe business, as at least we still own a plot of land,” said Mr Kitti, now 56 and the father of four children.

“We were the first nursery to produce more than 100,000 young sprouts of longan.”

Once longan became commonplace, he gradually shifted to ornamental palms that were indigenous to Narathiwat and the South such as maak daeng (sealing wax palm or lipstick palm), chao muang trang (Sumawong’s palm), chao muang thalang and Bangsoon palm.

Mr Kitti later moved to cactus when palm sales struggled as Thailand was caught in the 1997 financial crisis. Cactus is relatively cheap, tolerant to the dry season and, most importantly, beautiful.

“Palm is more complicated, as you need to think first about the right location for it to be planted to make it look splendid, particularly for rare palm. Rare palms are much more expensive than cactus,” said Mr Kitti. 

Nonetheless, the 40-rai nursery boasts more than 10 varieties of native palms and 300-400 varieties of cactus, with prices varying from just 10 baht to 10,000 baht.

After a recent visit by Narathiwat’s governor, it has been proposed that Valentinepanmmai be developed as an eco-tourism site and open for botanic study visits by plant lovers and local youngsters.

However, despite such a promising prospect, Mr Kitti insists the nursery is not as lucrative as some people would like to believe.

“Plants and gardening are like luxury goods that people choose to give up when they are starving, particularly once the economy is in trouble. My engineering background helps a lot in systemising the way we do business as well as cost management.”

Mr Kitti said hard work and perseverance are important because doing business in Narathiwat is not easy. Thais are unwilling to work in the province, so he depends exclusively on Myanmar workers. He said he hopes he inspired younger locals to choose a career in agriculture.

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