I reckon they should let them get some exercise rooting about in the orchards. It’d be beneficial for the orchard and for the pork, but I’ll leave you that wall to bang your head against. The permaculturist approach of mult-functionality and win-win-wins is a hard sell in these parts.

Never heard about pigs and wheels producing electricity. Have you ever seen something like that?

jeff

Thanks for the post. I don’t know if “conservatism” is the right word for practices that require dumping poisons into the remaining swamp paddy ecology in Mae Rim. The idea that we can only acquire food through chemical warfare against Mother Nature is pretty darned radical (in the figurative use of the term).

I’m not sure what’s going on. If you ask Ai Serd, he shrugs his shoulders and says that’s what everyone has always done. He says this despite the fact that it’s been within his own lifetime that farming practices have undergone a fundamental change. His parents’ generation did not have use of tractors, so-called “improved” hybrid seeds, dry-season irrigation, or the whole petro-chemical package of fertilizers and biocides. Nor did his grandparents’ generation or anyone else’s since the beginning of Thais or farming.

It’s easy to walk along the dyke throwing handfuls of colorful granules or pumping a backpack sprayer. Wielding a hoe or sacks of compost to accomplish the same goals is just not an option. Tell them about the fact that biological activity in the paddy helps, or that ducks are better than molluscicides against snails, or that the reason their yields suck so badly is because the Ph is so low from decades of soil abuse … well, don’t bother. Talk is cheap and they’re used to hearing a lot of cheap talk. I save my breath for the few bright lights who are ready to try something different. If enough of them emerge, then there will be viable alternatives ready when the shit hits the fan. And then the rest of the herd will come along out of necessity. Of course, by then, all my neighbors will have sold their land to Bangkokians, their kids will be unemployed and burning up shit, and the last flocks of migrating egrets will have ceased to arrive.

People are just ignorant. The people that grow the food, and the people that buy it from them. Where do you get your food? Unless you’re buying from the precious few natural alternatives, then you too (me too!) are rewarding bad farming and bad food. I reckon we lay off the farmers and turn the heat on the consumers. All the do-gooding self-righteous people of Chiang Mai STILL buy their food from the same damned places. Ride our bicycles from the green strategy meeting (in the coal-fired air-conditioned concrete box) to the chemical market and send a message to the chemical farmers: Thanks for your hard work against our Mother. Keep at it; I’ll be back tomorrow for more.”

You can join the weekly CSA boxes of veggies and fruit, and order the eggs extra every week. Or visit JJ organic market every wed and sat morning, the earlier the better.

http://www.fairearthfarm.com/about-2/csa
http://www.fairearthfarm.com/jj-market-organic-haven.html.

My neighbor raises a lot of ducks, and it’d be semi defacto organic, though maybe not exactly awesome on life quality of the birds. They’re tasty anyway.

Cheers,

Jeff