After a while
the ideas get very confused. You go to a
developing country as an agricultural development worker thinking you are going
to help farmers. So many ideas that you
have.
But when you
arrive, nothing is the same. The weather
is not the same. The soil is not the
same. The crops are not the same. The economy is not the same. And the culture is not the same. More than anything, the fact that the culture
is different, that the people's way of life is different, this puts your ideas
on hold. Before anything you have to
learn to see with a new pair of eyes.
I gained my
farming experience on a dairy goat farm near Guelph, Ontario, Canada. I had been a member of an ecological farmer's
association for about four years and a member of a national organic gardening
organization. For a time I hung about
with a rural learning group. I helped a
bit with instituting a chapter of an international organic crop improvement
association. All these community
oriented, organic, biodynamic, rural and alternative economic ideas floating
around in my head were then spurred to furious heights by studying
international development at university.
But what would
any of this mean to small farmers turning over the dirt and scattered all over
the world in countries on the periphery of the global scene? Probably very little, at least in
technological and biological terms. This
should come as no surprise. In Canada, no farm
environment or farm system is really the same.
The context around the world is completely different. But what of the principles of organic
farming? Perhaps the principles would
apply in other countries? Perhaps they
would not? The following story, sketched
as I understood it, is that of a man I met, his family, his neighbours, and the
land he had worked his entire life.
Nai Onsi lived
in Khoo Khad Village
in Northeastern Thailand. Khoo Khad village had a population of more
than two hundred families. Few people
considered the number of individuals in the village as an important
figure. The village was about fifteen
minutes off the main highway. The dusty
road to the village was built around 1970.
Nai Onsi felt that the road had been a good thing. Access to the market in the nearby town made
it possible to both sell his crops and buy factory made pails, rope, clothing,
tv's, and soap etc. The road also
brought the government, electricity, and the industrial world. He had built his new house three years
earlier. It had cement posts instead of
wooden poles, a tin roof instead of thatch, two separate rooms upstairs, a
storage room downstairs, and a cooking area.
This was one of the nicer houses in Khoo Khad. Not much for privacy. But then who in Khoo Khad was interested in
privacy?
People worked together,
ate together, slept together, did everything together. There was a general rule that men and women's
functions were separated - even eating separately - but in practice this did
not always hold true; when there was work to be done, especially in the paddy,
there was work to be done; women could plow and men could cook. November and December were allocated for the
rice harvest. Virtually everybody was in
the paddies. Nai Onsi, his brother, his
wife, his son, and one of the younger children (school closed for the rice
harvest) worked together. One of his
daughters worked with a crew of young people who shift from farm to farm, a
sort of community self-help labour redistribution and courting process.
Harvesting was
done by hand with one tool, a sickle.
Sheaves of grain were bound together by a thin strip of bamboo. Separation of the grain from the straw was
done by hand also; a sheaf of grain was quickly bound into a rope tied to the
ends of two sticks and swung against a board.
Rice for the family and a portion for the village Buddhist monks were
stored in a shed by the house. This rice
was a glutinous variety, indigenous and well adapted to the environment - not a
high yielder, but stable; it sticks together when cooked and is eaten in the
palm of the hand. Conventional rice was
grown for sale and/or used for payment of debts to the local moneylender. Milling was done at the local mill (made in Japan) and the
bran was given to the miller - no one ate whole grain rice.
Nai Onsi had
about six hectares of rice paddy and six hectares of upland. This was usually tilled with any of his three
buffalo. They pulled a single small, six
to eight inch ploughshare. Sometimes he
rented a walking tractor. The buffalo
also produced manure, of course, which was very important because the sandy,
acid, and saline soil had a low inherent fertility. The animals also processed the rice stubble
and straw. These somewhat nutrition-free
foodstuffs comprised the gross portion of their diet, given that after rice
planting and the planting of necessary cash crops on the upland, little land
remained for grass or forage production.
Nai Onsi's farm
system was, however, even more complex than this. Small ponds had been dug in some of the
paddies. Fish fingerlings were raised in
these and in the rainy season the fish were released to flooded rice
paddies. The fish fed on rice plant
pests and fertilized the water at the same time. Nai Onsi did not use biocides on the rice
because they killed the fish, the main protein component of the family
diet. The biocides would also kill the
many kinds of edible insects living in and around the paddy. Synthetic fertilizers were too expensive to
buy in adequate supply to profitably invest in the farm system. Besides, such quantities of fertilizer were
also not good for the fish. Vegetables
were grown in small patches close to the hand dug well for easy watering. The vegetables were fertilized with manure
and rice hulls. Bamboo shoots, some bush
and tree leaves, and chillies were eaten.
About thirty chickens scratched around the house cleaning up litter. During the rice harvest they ranged in the
paddy picking up any loose seeds that had fallen from handling. A sow was raised and bred to have her litter
when the rice harvest was underway - bran was cheapest at that time of year and
the sow needed the extra feed to raise her piglets.
In essence, Nai
Onsi's farm was self-sufficient and natural, though perhaps more by default
than by intent. Nai Onsi would have
liked to buy a walking tractor for himself and to increase crop production of
his limited land base, perhaps with synthetic inputs, if he could have afforded
them. His decisions, nonetheless, were
rational, based on his needs, conditions, and opportunities.
This snapshot of
Nai Onsi’s farm by no means implied that his situation static. Although traditional in many respects, the
farm had experienced many changes since he and his ancestors first began
farming. Rice has been exported out of
Thailand since the mid-19th century. Peasant
farmers were, in this sense and in living memory, always linked to commercial
production. Since the 1960's, roads
built into the Northeast accelerated the rate of export remarkably. Thailand competes with the United States
in terms of rice export.
Increased
production in Thailand,
however, had been largely due to putting the plough to virgin soils, not
through per unit area increases.
Consequently, much less than twenty percent of the original forests
remain. Rice is planted anywhere it is
possible to flood the soil.
Non-traditional crops (maize, cassava, kenaf) are planted on the
uplands. More than ninety percent of the
farming in the Northeast is dependent entirely on rainfall, which is high in
volume (around 1400mm/annum) but restricted to June through October with the
majority falling in August.
Precipitation is sporadic and often there is drought. The sandy soils also erode easily and on the
uplands the erosion problem is severe.
To make matters worse, the near elimination of forest cover has
increased temperatures by three to four degrees so that daytime temperatures
above 40 degrees Celsius are now common.
These high temperatures have degraded organic matter in the soil.
A persistent
trend in the weakening of real value in cash crop prices from the mid-1970's
had affected Nai Onsi's family and farm.
When the road first came to Khoo Khad village he could buy the
manufactured clothes and pails with his then strictly traditional farm
output. With some optimism, he had
expanded his rice paddy even into marginal areas and begun to grow cash crops
on the upland (first cutting down the forest).
He had done this to earn more cash to support a surprisingly healthy and
large family (introduction of modern medicines) and to continue paying for the
manufactured goods, on which the family had come to depend. The natural environment that had once supplied
medicines, clothing, protein, building materials, even forage for the buffalo
had largely disappeared. Four of Nai
Onsi's children had already gone to Bangkok, the terminus of Thailand's
economy, to support the increasing cash needs of the family farm. And to fend for themselves. A fifth was planning the same move.
As of 1990, Thailand's
export economy experienced a rapid growth rate of ten percent in GNP. Exports were chiefly of manufactured
goods. Agricultural exports constituted
about fifteen percent of total export value.
The export of manufactured goods had its competitive edge based on two
critical factors: 1) cheap labour migrating from the countryside and 2) cheap
agricultural products. Cheap labour,
because oversized families increasingly dependent on the cash economy have had
little alternative but to send their children into the industrial labour force
at whatever wages were paid. Cheap
agricultural products, because, in what was still characteristically a
subsistent agricultural economy of segregate and independent villages, there
was neither the absolute need for better cash returns nor the collective power
to change anything.
Today, no more
land exists into which food production can be expanded, to feed an increasing
population or to increase supplies to the agricultural export sector. Migration to Bangkok continues and labour
shortages occur in rural areas. The
response to labour shortages by farmers appears to be increased mechanization
(increased dependence on fossil fuels).
The response to the need for increased agricultural production per unit
area is, for the most part, to increase the use of synthetic chemicals, hybrid high
yielding seed, and commoditization of all on-farm activities.
Nai Onsi has
been farming in the midst of a widespread phenomena of socio-economic change. The fundamental basis of his subsistence
system was translating to a production system.
Because he did not have the capital to buy more land it was probable
that he would have to intensify production.
Other farmers have had the capital to buy land from farmers who have had
to sell. Likewise, companies increase
their own holdings of land, buying from
farmers who choose to or must sell.
Companies also make arrangements in some areas to supply all the inputs
for specific crops to farmers and agreed to buy the crops from the farmers
(contract farming).
Of course, there
are folks who wish to reverse, stall, or redirect these trends. Non-government organizations and some
government institutions try to re-establish the independence of the small
farmer. Activities range from farmer
initiated, cooperative, animal and rice banks, to weaving, to integrated and
diversified farming projects, to village industry marketing programs, to
appropriate technology. Some of these
activities engage high paid foreign consultants. Some engage international volunteers. They have worked with leguminous alley
cropping systems that can significantly reduce erosion. Others research green manures and nitrogen
fixing crops. Some work with integrated
farm systems.
Nai Onsi himself
felt that he had benefitted from these investments, especially where they
introduced leguminous trees and rice-fish culture on his farm. In many respects, these relationships with previous
experts paved the way for my introduction of goats. Both Nai Onsi and his wife were interested in
the idea of diversifying their livestock without any significant changes in how
they operated their farm. Although
neither of them had ever seen goats or eaten goat meat or milk, they were
willing to experiment.
How would this
small livestock project evolve? Would it
be accepted? Would it benefit Nai
Onsi? I did not know. What I did know was that my experience was
with hundreds of goats, not three. I
came from a farm with a highly mechanized milking parlour where twelve goats
were milked at once, not one beneath the house.
I knew how to operate a combine and harvesting in ten minutes the amount
of grain which four or five people in Khoo Khad harvested in a day. I purchased imported sisal in the store for
mechanically binding hay bales, whereas with his own hands Nai Onsi made from
bamboo which grew on his own land, a thin strip for hand binding sheaves of
rice.
No question that
Nai Onsi was the expert. Far more than I,
he knew what the machinations of the modern world had done to his farm and
family. Sure, some of this change he
felt was good. Some probably not so good. And some about which there was little he
could do.
What I did know,
was that with his calloused feet and hands, his weathered face, and his
patience he lived closer to the land than I have ever even dreamed of knowing.
In our apocalyptic
world of climate change, is it not Nai Onsi’s relationship with his land of critical
importance? What tractors and accounts
and chemistry have turned so many of us so very far away from?
I do not really
know.
It is just this
feeling that I have.
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