The next portion of this email is mostly educational and background information if you would prefer to just read about our stay instead of wading through all this information go to the "***" now ;).
Fair Trade:
So for a little background info before I share my thoughts on Surin. This is a good time to explain what I did with my life in Denver the year before we left to travel. I co-coordinated an event that brought together students, farmers, organizations, non-profits, and others interested in the topic of fair trade.
First off I should say that fair trade is not the opposite of free trade. Fair trade works completely within the current free trade, market driven model, though many people who have talked with people who have been affected by free trade agreements tend to be against the affects the model has on many communities. I am not going to touch on free trade in this email as I am not fully educated on the topic and it surely would make this email so long it would be unreadable in one sitting (making the big assumption it isn't already).
Fair trade, however, I know a bit more about. It is the belief that many large companies at the moment are taking advantage of people in less developed countries who have few options other than to enter into contracts and even less bargaining power when setting the details of the contract, resulting in the current situation. Many people are unable to cover their costs at the end of each year and are falling deep into debt.
Businesses around the world who sell fair trade products believe whether or not other governments allow this practice (sometimes they even encourage it) to continue, the producers of the products we consume should have a louder voice. In the fair trade supply chain all the parties involved seek to increase dialogue, transparency, respect, and equality in international trade. This means that prices are raised to insure the producer earns enough money to pay for education, basic health care, and community development, as well as work under safe conditions. It also gives more ownership to the producers through the coop model.
Here (there) in the US individuals can choose whether or not to buy fair trade items. There is a certifying body (TransFair) that stamps each fair trade item with their stamp, similar to the organic certifying method. You can read more about fair trade from the links on the left hand side of our blog.
We came to Surin because two of the rice farmers in this area attended the event I organized and we wanted to meet-up with them here. While we were here we taught a bit a English, learned the necessary Thai, ate tons of Thai food, and had the wonderful opportunity to stay at a fair trade village with an incredible woman who is an outstanding organizer.
Surin 40 years ago:
About 40 years the Thai government started promoting what they called the Green Revolution. The idea was to increase productivity by shifting the focus from producing multiple crops on one plot of land to be used for local consumption to expanding land size, increasing technology, and focusing on cash crops (only producing one crop that has a high market value) meant for export. When Government officials came in and told the farmers that planting... say sugarcane, would make them money because the people in Europe had a sweet tooth and would pay higher prices for it and that with the use of chemical fertilizers they could harvest larger quantities, the numbers added up well and many people switched over to cash crops. This switch has meant that farmers sell everything they produce in order to make money to buy the food they consume. The result was mass deforestation and the wide spread use of chemical fertilizers, in addition to the increase in economic wealth of Thailand.
In the mist of the Green Revolution:
Chemical Fertilizers:
What the farmers didn't calculate was the fact that using chemical fertilizers would deplete the soil quality and each year it would take more and more fertilizer to produce the same output. It soon became clear that the chemicals also had damaging affects on the environment and the farmers health. Within the first 13 years the number of farmer's deaths doubled and the number of people suffering from pesticide poisoning sky rocketed by 8 times what it was before the "Green Revolution". Pesticides have been associated with cancer, genetic mutation, and birth defects. It causes groundwater contamination and does damage to fisheries.
Debt:
As the price of rice fell and the level of investment needed to be made in order to maintain a chemical farm rose the farmers tried to increase productivity through land expansion. With the monetary investment needed for land expansion, increasing amounts of fertilizer and seeds the farmers saw their profits fall and soon had to start borrowing money. Farmers borrow from the BAAC at a rate of 12%. Each March they are expected to pay back their loan in full, though many fail to meet this deadline and fall further in debt. The accumulated debt is over $7 billion dollars and 68% of farmers in the northeastern rice growing region hold a debt that is three times their annual income and clearly getting worse with a 12% interest rate. Before the Green Revolution the farmer's income was very low, now it is negative.
Breakdown of Villages:
As people became desperate village communities began to break down. After the rice growing season family members would more to Bangkok in search of additional employment... driving taxis, manual labor, anything. Through this process there was a loss of indigenous knowledge and an explosion of urban problems as the gap between rich and poor grew. Some farmers even had to 'sell' their daughters when the planting season ends to cover investments and pay off past debts. All this is the result of a government policy which but agricultural production and nation wide economic growth before the livelihoods and culture of its citizens. There was a time when everything a farmer needed could be grown on his/her land but now there is little money left over for food.
A "New" Method:
In the last 5 years people have begun to choose to go back to the traditional methods of farming. Many Famers are deciding to start practicing integrated farming again where they grow multiple crops on their land and increase livestock production. The benefits include: the fact that different plants exploit different soil, livestock serves to control pests and weeds, as well as reducing the risk of production loss due to environmental fluctuations. Additionally, crop residues and animal waste can be converted into marketable products and allow the recycling of nutrients. Example below.
***Surin as an example:
During our stay in Tab Tai Village we had the opportunity to see what an integrated, organic, fair trade, small scale farm functioned like and more importantly the type of life it fostered in the community. Our week in Tab Tai looked like this...
We enter what will become our temporary home for the next week and immediately Pi Kanya (our host) is apologizing in her minimal English for it being too small... she's been to the US - she knows how we live. It was almost embarrassing to reassure her that her one room, cement house, with no furniture besides a few mats (which we slept, ate, and relaxed on) and a small TV (which they watched Thai soap opras on) was just perfect (especially since we didn't know perfect in Thai and English was not an option for communication). We have now traveled long enough to know that a home like this is all a family needs to be happy and to us it was just was perfect as any other house in the world she could have lead us into but she knew it was not what we grew-up in at home... ("..." because that was a side tangent and I have no way of connecting that to my next thought).
The next morning we were woken by the creaking of the door as the family woke to start their day. The next morning Jason and I tried to remember what time it was that they left, but were too dazed to remember if it even really happened. When we finally rolled out of bed at 6:30 the family was already hard to work on their daily chores. Jason and I were soon put to work helping prepare a garden to plant vegetable seeds in. After digging, racking, de-weeding, and poking the ground (these are not the technical terms) we spread manure around the plot. So when Pi Kanya said "manure" I did my best to hold back my "ew" expression (I can really be a girl sometimes) but when she took us over the to pig pen and started shoveling manure into the bucket I decided that pig poo isn't soo bad. It didn't smell bad, it wasn't mushy or dirty. Later we found out this was because Pi Kanya's pigs are healthy pigs whose diet consists of organic rice shells (which they buy at a discount from their coop that sells the shells of the rice (a waste product after the processing of rice) that they and other farmers sell to the coop - it's a big circle), thus their poo doesn't smell and is the perfect organic fertilizer for her vegetable garden. Her family saves 2,000 Baht ($54 - which is a lot of money in Tab Tai) a year by using their organic moo's (moo in the 'rising' tone is the Thai word for pig... it is definitely the cows who moo so I think they got this one backwards) poo instead buying it. If they were to feed the moo's non-organic feed then their poos would be the "ew" type and smell real bad.
In the afternoon we walked around with Pi Kayna and picked out vegetables for the Green (Organic, not cash crops) Market that her and the other farms have set-up as a way to raise awareness about organic rice and bring in additional cash. Most woman leave with a 300- 700 Baht ($8 - $19) profit. The veggies also made an appearance in our dinner. That night we helped with dinner and went to bed soon after the sun went down.
The next day I don't remember when the door creaked either - though I am sure I checked my watch and Jason didn't even move. Around 6:00 we roll out of bed to find out that the first organic moo's meat (pork that is) is up for sale for the other villagers... it won't even make it into Surin. The community tends to keep alot of the food within the community, helping eachother to be more sustainable. The event was monumental, and even though our minimal Thai didn't catch a word they said (probably because they speak Khmer (Cambodian) in the village, a fact we learned later in the day) we could feel the excitement. An organic moo meant that fertilizer would be more cost effective, not to mention that moo's like rice shells so much that, on average, they weight 5-10lbs more than a moo eating leftovers. This is an added profit of 400 - 800 Baht ($10-$22) per moo. Pi Kanya said that with the money they have saved they plan to buy two female moo's to produce baby moo's in order to not have to pay the high price of buying a baby moos from some big moo farm - also increasing their sustainability.
In the afternoon (the sun was really too hot to work) most of the family congregated at the front of the house and talked about life in the village, which we understood none of so we went to read a bit. On the way to our reading spot we saw a chicken help her newly hatched chick start to strut (also not a technical term). The chickens are useful on the farm because they taste good and because they help with the pests that have come back in full force since Pi Kanya has stopped using pesticides. That evening was the same as the first.
The third day was Sunday and many of the farmers spent a larger portion of the day enjoying the company of friends from down the road. In the morning we "taught English" (AKA played red light, green light) to the villages children's group which was started by Pi Kanya's daughter. The club was formed so that traditional wisdom could be passed from the elders in the community to the youth, with a focus of sustainability.
I spent the afternoon making sure the cows didn't eat the banana trees. This is a more important job than you would be led to believe by the title. Those cows are not picky when it comes to green plants and, to no fault of my own, Pi Kanya now has two less banana trees.
When we were walking the cows back to their barn Pi Kanya said to Jason to 'Kin Kao" (which means 'to eat' in Thai) and motioned her arm from him to come. A couple minutes later Jason comes walking up with a cow from the pasture... by Pi Kanya's face we know immediately that wasn't what she meant. Jason's looks at her "Get Cow?". The original intention was for Jason to bring over some of the hay for the cows to eat which lied to his right (Kin Kao)... he brought back the cow which grazed to his left (get cow). Oh we all laughed... some just harder than others.
The next day we found out that Pi Kanya's family gets up sometime between 2:00 and 4:30am depending on the chores that need to be done for the day... though we tried our best the earliest we could muster was 5:30am during our stay. The day was spent taking a bike ride to Pi Kanya's rice field. Her family owns about 6 acres of land. It will take her a couple of weeks to harvest the rice with her husband. Once the rice is cut it will be taken to Rice Fund (this is where we spent the rest of our stay teaching English). Rice Fund is the coop that famers from the region of Surin own. It accepts only Organic or "in conversion" rice for sale domestically and internationally. Rice Fund processes, stores, and boxes all of its own rice. The shells that are left over after processing are sold back to the farmer at a discount for fertilizer and moo (pig remember) feed. Surin Farmer's Support also works very closely with the Rice Fund. It's main objective is to be of support to organic farmers. It also oversees the Green Market and the Kao Hom (Fragrant Rice) shop (where we stayed), which sells the rice and other natural products here in Surin. Currently, the Rice Fund has a large surplus of their rice sitting in their mill, unable to sell it because there is not enough demand for the product in Thailand or abroad.
The rest of the days we spent in Tab Tai were mostly a combination of the first few days... accept for the day I taught Beam (Pi Kanya's 4 year old son) to ride a bike. It was so wonderful to see his face when he saw me walking beside him instead of hanging onto the back holding him up. I was so proud of him (his picture is on the blog).
The farmers in Surin are certified Organic and Fair Trade, though I get the feeling that Organic and Fair Trade is just a way to reach a niche market. I didn't feel like Fair Trade had much of an impact within the community (though if I spoke Thai I might have a different story). What I felt made these communities so strong was that they were self reliant. The market didn't really matter anymore because no matter what they had food on the table at the end of the day. They had the security of being (almost... they would miss their soaps) completely sustainable. It made me questions which one is more important, finding a market to sell your product to in order to make money or the security that comes with sustainability - or if they both have their own roles....
Now that our stint on the farm is done, we are back in Surin with really nothing else to report. Which is a good thing because I am sure no one is reading any longer ;). That's okay it helps me to process it all.
Tomorrow we will cross into Laos at Chong Mek and explore the backroads of Laos for the next month. We will spend a day or two in places like Si Phan Don, Champasak, Sam Neua, Luang Prabang, and Muang Sing... if you are following us in your atlas' at all.
Much love to everyone who is still around to hear it!
Bangkok:
Grandfather in Tab Tai Village:
Surin:
