It is home to a sprawling 8,000 sq m (1.8-acre) farm, which produces some 1,300kg (2,866lbs) of fruit and vegetables, as well as 6,000 chicken eggs and 4,500 duck eggs every month for the resort’s restaurants and bars.

To date, only a smattering of other resorts in the region, including Buahan, A Banyan Tree Escape and The Residence Bintan, both in Indonesia, and The Farm at San Benito, in the Philippines, have ventured into their own on-site farms. Conrad Koh Samui’s is said to be one of the largest hotel-managed organic farms in Southeast Asia.

It began in 2019, when the resort’s general manager Ruben Dario Gabino noticed there was a plot of unused forested land on the estate. Not knowing a thing about gardening, Gabino read Regenerative Agriculture (2019), by Richard Perkins, to learn about various farming techniques, and decided to put theory into practice.

Gabino wanted to create a circular economy: using food waste to restore soil and reduce the need for trash collection; and grow produce to use in the restaurants, saving money and ensuring quality.

When the pandemic struck a year later, with global travel restrictions in place, disruptions in logistics chains and fewer guests travelling to the resort, Gabino and his team found themselves with the opportunity to further experiment and develop the concept of operating a more self-sustaining model.

Today, Iris Farm is thriving, with produce including pandan, corn, aubergines, chilli, ginger and leafy greens, as well as lemon, cacao and coffee plants. Some 2,500kg of food waste is composted monthly and used throughout the property as fertiliser.

Justin Galea, Conrad Koh Samui’s director of culinary operations, says the hotel’s various outlets consider which ingredients are available when planning their menus.

For example, the banana and papaya trees have been bearing so much fruit, the team has had to find creative ways to use the harvest sustainably. It is one of the reasons an abundance of crispy (and healthy) banana chips is made available to guests in-room and as snacks on island-hopping boat rides.

Even smaller crop yields are carefully parcelled out – pepper from the farm is used specifically at upscale steakhouse Jahn.

“The products from Iris Farm are harvested only when they are fully mature. There is a vast difference between a month-old product bought from the super­market or supplier, and one harvested at the right time and used the same day,” says Gabino.

Despite the farm’s lush appearance, it has been a laborious process of trial and error, says Gabino. Despite their best efforts, some plants such as strawberries and grapes have not taken to the soil. They are currently working on avocado trees but it is likely to be about three years before they will bear fruit.

On the resort grounds, there is also Botanikka Eco Cafe, which was converted from an unused villa. It houses a hydroponics system to grow vegetables including lettuce, coriander and spring onion in water-based mineral solutions, and a mushroom farm that produces impressive amounts of fungi for use in Asian and Western dishes.

Botanikka serves house-roasted coffee made with beans sourced from northern Thailand and, in line with the resort’s ethos of conscious consumption, is a venue for coffee roasting and kombucha making workshops. One drink well worth trying is the coffee kombucha, which is upcycled from excess brewed coffee to produce a refreshingly fizzy chilled drink.

Iris Farm, which is open to guests at fixed times of the day, is also home to some 250 free-roaming chickens, ducks and geese, a herd of goats and some rabbits. The rabbits were initially brought in to be reared for food, but nobody had the heart to slaughter them so they have become farm pets, much to the delight of guests, particularly children, says Gabino.

In March, newborn kid Johan became the farm’s mascot after he was rejected by the herd. These days, the good-natured goat can sometimes be spotted tottering around after its adopted “father”, Khun Phong, a gardener at the farm, and will happily accept head pats from visitors.

Meat products are carefully considered, too, and more than 70 per cent of ingredients are sourced locally. Seafood is bought from local fishermen and the resort’s in-house butcher works with a satellite farm to rear and slaughter pigs. The pork is then cut and portioned by the resort’s butcher and, Galea says with pride, the entire animal save for the kidneys is used for food.

The Conrad Koh Samui also holds by-appointment-only butchery sessions for guests – complete with alcohol shots for Dutch courage – to offer a sobering behind-the-scenes insight into how meat is processed for the dining table.

There are, of course, choice cuts of pork chops served at Azure or in curries at southern Thai restaurant Zest, and the team also makes sausages and bacon for breakfast. Pig bones are boiled for stock and the heads turned into terrines for Jahn.

Galea is experimenting with making cured meats such as guanciale, speck and chorizo – the samples I tasted were as good as those made by artisans – in a repurposed wine fridge, and hopes to ramp up production. Meanwhile, fresh salmon is being smoked in-house for the breakfast buffet because Galea could not find commercial smoked salmon that met his exacting standards at the right price.

Ultimately, says Gabino, the goal is to achieve better quality products for guests.

“Being self-sufficient and compounding our current assets has been vital for us,” he says. “We know exactly where and how our fruits and vegetables are produced, and we can promise high-quality throughout …

“There is a special joy in taking care of your own food supply. Not just by purchasing a product but living the entire process from planting the seed to the final dish.”