Saturday October 27th, 2007

This morning A. Phrek took me to Dong Palan, one of the two villages I plan to use in my field work. If all goes to plan, I will be living in Dong Palan during the rice harvest hopefully for two or three weeks in the beginning of December. Dong Palan is a rice based farming system, which means that most of the farm land is rice dominated and other crops are grow during and between rice seasons. Today though, we didn't focus on the rice, per say because not much is going on with it right now. Interesting factoid, all the rice in this village is grown is for subsistence. We spent most of our time on a piece of land which is used to grow cash crops, mostly okra (right now) but also cucumbers, a long green bean type thing, glutinous corn and a perennial tree whose leaves are used as a spice. 11 farmers farm this 11 rai plot and although each individually farm their own plot, there is a lot of helping out and sharing... The okra is produced through contract farming, which means that the seeds are given to the farmers, the amount of fertilizers and pesticides used are dictated by what the company says and that the quality of product is dictated also by the company. More or less the farmers are completely controlled by the large companies. The cucumbers, beans and indigenous corn, though, are bought by local traders, so this gives the farmer more control.

here are some pictures of the cash crop fields:

To the left is indigenous glutinous corn crops (kaaw poot kaaw niaw) ; to the right are what are called Tua Fuk Yaaw ( a very long green bean, used in Som Tam - spicy papaya salad-); Directly to the back are the cucumbers.
These are chili (prik) seedlings that will be relay cropped into the second corn crop, there is also a cabbage crop.

This is a little baby glutinous corn, i thought it was pretty.

These are corn stalk roots, I thought they were pretty cool looking.
This is one of the main water pumps, they use furrow irrigation ps... Two okra plots sandwich the pump and to the back is a banana forest and the perennial trees which are grown for harvest.
Okra and a beautiful Northern Thai sky.

Okra and a really amazingly beautiful okra flower.

And now it's time for some: RICE!!!!!! (semi-erect hybrid glutinous rice, to be exact)

Harvesting rice!!! The community developed this new harvesting technique and it's actually kind of wonderful (it allows the harvester to harvest three rows of rice at a time and allows them to decide where to cut the crop.) PS this is Phii Mut and I may be staying with his family during my home stay.The rice is left to dry for three days and then it is piled into stakes and later covered in plastic, to keep it from molding. This is an example of integrating cattle into the rice fields once the crop is harvested, they basically weed the fields...

After our little look around the village, we went to this stand and ate the most amazing fried bananas, taro and sweet potatoes. yum. Well I hope you are all as excited as I am, but I'm not sure that's possible....

Thursday October 25th, 2007

As the majority of you know, I was raised in a secular Jewish family, I had a bat-mitzvah (i hope i spelled that right), I celebrated all the holidays and by the age of 8 I probably knew more about the tenements in NY than most 40 year olds. I then and still do feel a large connection to being Jewish, yet I do not see my connection to Judaism as a religious connection but more of a cultural and historical one. I don't know much about the teachings of the Torah and I have a difficulty reading such texts because of how engrossed they are in god and the presence of unexplainable religious miracles. I think the presence of a god or a higher being within Judaism has always made me keep my distance and not allowed me to take from the religious teachings the morals and such that Judaism teaches. Most of my Jewish understanding has come from my parents, Yiddish folk stories and my Babby. In essence religion makes me uncomfortable.

As many of you know I have been taking a tutorial in the basics of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, I did this because the last time I was in Thailand I had a very tainted experience with Buddhism and came back to the United States kind of bitter and confused. While I was in Thailand, the monk in my village stole money from the village and gambled and while I was on a meditation retreat the monk who was suppose to converse with us and discuss what Buddhism was, spent the weekend preaching to us. I also noticed that when I went to temples with the Thai people I knew, they simply prayed to Buddha and there was no discussion of the philosophy or anything beyond praising a religious figure. I had previously only seen Buddhism through the western perspective, the philosophical approach of the yuppies with their meditation rooms and the Buddhist statues in gardens and such, not the everyday practice of Buddhism as a religion. My moms cousin, during the past 10 years or so, had been living at a zen monastery in California and she was able to give me some insight beyond what I knew but I still had a very idyllic idea of what Buddhism was. I came away from my experience in Thailand with a renewed feeling that religion (mostly in terms of buddhism) and the philosophies with which make up the basis of religion are in a constant state of mis-connect. This past summer while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to study as my tutorial I immediately said Buddhism, to my own surprise mind you. I realized that in order for me to do any kind of social research in a Buddhist country I needed to have a better idea of what Buddhism was, both as a philosophy and as a practiced religion, and especially of what Buddhism means to Thailand.

For the first half of my tutorial i met with an American, who is a professor at CMU and is a Chan priest (very similar to Zen and originated in China). He was supposed to give me background on Mahayana Buddhism specifically Zen and Chan (because that is what he is most familiar with). More or less this professor ignited something within my brain, it was as if everything I had been thinking about, in terms of how I saw my life and how I wanted to live my life were in direct correlation with the Buddha's core teachings and now I finally had the vocabulary to talk about it. I also felt very comfortable with our meetings because one of the first thing Aacaan Christopher said to me was, Buddhism is neither a philosophy nor is it a religion, it is a way of life. I didn't need to be believe in the stories or anything I couldn't see or feel, in reality there was nothing in particular I had to believe in order to feel connected to the teachings.

Although this bit of self discovery was exciting, I still didn't have a context of how Buddhism worked as a practiced religion; this then led me to an ex-monk who is now a professor at CMU. He gave my the outline of basic Theravada philosophy, history, cosmology etc... And then I finally got to ask some questions. The language barrier made our discussions somewhat difficult but I think we were both able to get something out of our conversations. I was not some much interested in understanding and picking apart the teachings as I was in trying to understand how Buddhism became a religion and why it was necessary to be a religion.

As I younger child I remember i used to call me parents into my room or the living room and I would sit down with them have some pretty intense philosophical life discussions with them. I guess I am the kind of person who likes to talk things out, with myself and with others. I wanted to pose some of the core things I have been thinking about, through my Buddhist tutorials , please if you are interested write back and tell me what you think.

-Why is religious belief necessary? Why can’t we as human simply live to believe that we live?

-How does a philosophy become a religion? Is that change a positive or negative one? What do ideas gain from becoming religion? How do religion and philosophy differ?

-why do we focus so much on the idea of a presence of an afterlife when the only reality we have is the present? why cant we be satisfied with simply living and dying and allowing our matter to go back to the earth? Why must we live forever? Why is it necessary to know why we are here if the inevitable is that, one day our bodies and memories won’t be here but that right now we are conscious and able? Why do we need comfort and knowledge that something happens after death?

- Why cant we be satisfied with the knowledge that we don't know? why must there always be something bigger, greater than we are? is it our need for parental guidance?

-Buddhist philosophy is based around the idea, that the end of suffering will bring Nirvana (a state of pure bliss). Is it ok to say suffering is not necessarily bad, or at least that is good in moderation? Buddhism is the practice of the middle-way, so why isn’t it good to live between happiness and suffering? Maybe its good to have some suffering because it keeps you from not living purely for yourself?

- why do so many cultures and religions have god-like figures or beings? Why are we so afraid of being in control of our lives? Why do we feel the need to know that our existence is for a reason?

If you have made it to the end of the blog, thank you for reading.

Ps. I promised I would tell Emmie that I love her in my blog: Stinky get excited Thailand/Laos Summer 2008!

Monday October 22, 2007

Last week I came down with a bit of a parasite and did a brief stint in the local Chiang Mai Raam hospital, luckily I got out the day before my trip to Chiang Rai ( a province northeast of Chiang Mai). Bright and early Friday morning, my group and our thai student liaisons left for Chiang Khong, a small port town on the Mekong river, directly across from Laos. The drive was absolutely gorgeous, sprawling rice fields (close to harvest) and multi-cropped mountain sides. In Chiang Khong we stayed in a cute little hostel right on the Mekong and at night we could hear music coming from across the river. It was really interesting because the Mekong, in Chiang Khong, is not extremely wide and it seems quite easy to get across and also slightly unregulated…interesting.....

The next day we went to Chiang Saen, which is where the Golden Triangle is (on the thai side). The golden triangle is the place where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet on the Mekong. We took a quick boat ride out of Thailand over to the Lao side but of course we couldn’t go over to Myanmar for obvious reasons… Ps in this northern part of Myanmar there is no fighting by the way…. The views on the Mekong are pretty breathe taking and I couldn’t help but constantly feel as though I was looking at some sort of archetype photo of what most people think of when they think of a south east asian fishing village... It was quite weird… After our boat ride we had an incredible feast over looking myanmar, we had naam dtok (spicy chicken dish), moo tot (fried pork), a spicy fresh catfish soup, moo king (ginger pork), kaaw niaw (sticky rice) and another spicy pork vegetable dish… yum… We then drove off to Mae Sai which is the main border crossing town into Myanmar; the thai students went across the border to the black market and bought tons of cheap clothes and movies, etc…. We couldn’t go over because over visas are still single entry visas…It was a bummer... But there is a huge market on the thai side, so we walked around a bit, Bradley and I went to Wat Phra That Doi Waaw, which is on the top of a big hill and there is an incredible view of Myanmar from the top… It was also pomegranate season in the Northeast so I got a few and oddly enough it is also chestnut season and so I ate probably the best roasted chestnuts I have ever had… Our group then spent the night in Chiang Rai City which felt very similar to Chiang Mai expect it is smaller….. Nothing too exciting….

Yesterday, we went to the temple in Chiang Rai that holds an emerald Buddha image (which is one of the most revered types of Buddha images)… The original emerald Buddha was first held in Chiang Rai but during some sort of war it was lost to Laos and then finally moved to Bangkok. The image now in Chiang Rai is a copy of the original, but it is still quite stunning. Yesterday was also the Princess mothers (Kings mothers) birthday (she is dead but it is still celebrated) and she has a palace outside of Chiang Rai, called Doi Tung Palace, it is on top of a pretty large, very steep mountain and every year on her birthday people run up or bike up the mountain.. We got stuck in those activities and after an hour and a half or so we found out we weren’t going to be able to see her palace… Supposedly, the palace is known for its beautiful flower garden…. So, instead of going to the palace we went to a Wat that is populated by a band of monkeys and has a really beautiful cave at the top of a rock face with a very beautiful Buddha image. On our way down the stairs of death (the stairs leading to the cave, which were EXETREMELY steep, slippery and uneven) we got caught in a bit of a monkey battle but it was well worth the view and the cave.. Our last stop on our trip was Wat Rong Khun, which is an entirely white wat (which is quite breathe taking ps).., It is the project of a modern architect who is planning on building the wat for 100 years ( I don’t know the reason for the amount of time but I know it is significant)…. The wat has so far been worked on for the past 10 years but there is still a lot of work to be done. The main hall is the most complete and it is quite stunning. The actual hall itself is really interesting, a lot of intricate detail. What is so interesting about this wat is that the painting inside the main hall is very political and modern, a lot of stress on war and violence, weapons, hate, etc…. I would love to learn more about this temple and its purpose.

Although the northern part of the chiang rai province is quite close to the Chiang mai province, one can absolutely tell the difference the provinces. Chiang Rai has more of a northern feel, in terms of the architecture, dress and food. There is of course, also large influence from laos and myanmar in terms of architecture, dress and food.

Here is a link to a bunch of my photos, enjoy.

Friday October 5, 2007

Hey All,
So I recently put together an outline of my field work project and I have had a bunch of people show interest in wanting to read it so here it is, keep in mind it is a work in progress:
I. Basic Outline

- September to November literature review

-December at field work site

-January to February processing of data from field site

-collect data from CMU farmers market

- visit NGO

-March to April write report

II. Broad Questions

-What is sustainable agriculture?

-What is pesticide-free agriculture?

-What is chemically aware agriculture?

- What is organic agriculture?

-Why would a farmer, subsistent or commercial, choose to use sustainable practices?

-What is the history of sustainable agriculture in Thailand since the 1970’s? - What’s the history of agriculture in Thailand since the 1970’s?

-What incentives are presented to farmers to become sustainable (focusing on Thailand)?

-What kinds are farmers are drawn to sustainable agriculture practices?

-When was pesticide-free/ organic agriculture introduced to Northern Thailand/ Thailand in general?

III. Specific Questions for Field Work

-Does the farm use sustainable agricultural practices? If so, what are the specific sustainable practices used on the farm?

- Why did the farmer, farm hands choose to use or work on a farm which uses sustainable agricultural practices?

-Were there incentives for the farmer to use sustainable practices? If so, what were the incentives?

-Are there other farms in the community which use sustainable practices? If so, what practices are used?

-How does the surrounding community, especially other farmers, feel about the sustainable practices used on this farm?

-What is the history of agriculture in this community?

-What is grown on this farm? And the surrounding farms?

-What type of cropping system is used on the farm? Surrounding farms?

-What types of cropping systems have historically been used in the community?

-How long has the farm used sustainable practices?

-What are the views of the farmer, farmhands, family and community members on non-sustainable agricultural practices?

IV. Specific Questions for NGO:

-Need to figure out which NGO I am going to get in touch with, but in general, I want to understand through the eyes of an NGO what incentives and education they provide farmers in order for them to switch to more sustainable practices. I also want to know what their views are of sustainable agriculture in Thailand since the green revolution until now.

V. Questions for farmers at farmers market

- What are the specific sustainable practices used on this farm?

- Why did the farmer, farm hands choose to use or work on a farm which uses sustainable agricultural practices?

-Were their incentives for the farmer to use sustainable practices? If so, what were the incentives?

-How does the surrounding community, especially other farmers, feel about the sustainable practices used on this farm (from the view point of the farmer at the market)?

-Why did the farmer choose to become a member of the CMU farmers market?

-How long have they been involved in this farmers market?

-What produce do they grow?

-How long has the farm used sustainable practices?

VI. Objectives: (Cut out almost all of it, i guess you will just have to read my paper...)

My main objective is to understand why a farmer would chose to use sustainable methods, why they would care? I will be focusing of smaller farms and the personal incentives of individual farmers.

VII. Hypothesis (Research question rationalized)

I believe my hypothesis will grow out from my research; hopefully I will have one formulated before I begin my field work.

VIII. Basic Premises (Guesses, assumptions, biases)?

-Biases: -My knowledge is very U.S. centric and I have little understanding of the agricultural history of Thailand.

-Guesses: -The organic/ pesticide-free market is growing in Thailand because consumers of becoming more educated on what they eat (influence of mass media, increases in standard of living)

-Therefore more pressure in market for organic and pesticide-free produce = demand = farmer incentive

-More education of public means more education of farmers = personal incentive to be sustainable

- Sustainability produced produce is still too expensive for most of the population

-Place of lack of incentive for farmers and produce market, what can be done to change this?

-Assumptions: -poor subsistent farmers don’t have the funds to switch to sustainable practices. Farmers with more money can make the switch.

-Although agricultural education has grown, most are unaware of the dangers of some of the things they ingest because of ‘rural-ness’

IX. Preparations for Field Work

A. Frame work

i. Field sites:

1) Two to three weeks in Dong Pa Lan-Rice based cropping system-Chemically aware farm

-present during rice harvest, sometime between late November and late December

2) Multiple short trips to Ping Noi between late October and late November

-Vegetable based farming system

-Pesticide-free farm-made switch from conventional methods

3) CMU Farmers Market – Wednesdays and Saturdays-Go whenever I can

-Help sell produce from Dong Pa Lan

-Talk to farmers there

ii. Agents

1. At Site

-Farmer

-Farmers family

-farm hands

-community members

2. Not at Site

-A. Phrek

-Associates of A. Phrek

-NGO

-Possibilities:

1) Sustainable Agriculture Knowledge Development Institute (North Net Foundation)à San Sai

2) Upland Holistic Development Project

à Fang

3. Farmers Market

-farmer

-Farm hands

-Consumers

C. Language Preparations (What I need)

- I will need an interpreter for field work and talking with farmers at CMU farmers market
-Like to be able to ask the questions in Thai or be at a point where I can converse initially with those that I talk to so that I form a basis for a trusting relationship.

X. Methodology of Field Work

A. Approaches

-interviews

-NGO

-Farmers at Farmers Market

-Farm/farm hands at field work site

-book research

-field mapping

-my map

-farmers map

-farm hands map

-written surveys

-written observations

-First hand experience of rice farming

B. Things to be Clarified

-Basic Terminology

-What I want from my interactions with those on field work site

-How long I will be at field work site

-My involvement in harvest ( I want to be involved as much as possible)

-Arrange for an interpreter (Hopefully a student or older person who lives in the village)

-How I will collect my data

-charts, written surveys, tape recorder, drawings, journal

-What community expects of me

Questions to address before hand

-What is the history of agriculture in Thailand from the 1970’s until now?

-What types of agriculture are employed in Thailand, specifically in terms of rice?

-what is the history of rice farming in Thailand?

-What is rice?

-What is pesticide-free/organic farming?

-What are sustainable agricultural methods?

D. Presentation of Data

-Maps of farmland

-Ethnographic discussion of field work site

-written description of history of the agricultural history of Thailand since the Green Revolution, focusing primarily on the sustainable agriculture movement

-integration of interviews in discussion of field work

-Discussion of my first hand experience on farm

-Integration of book research (for basic grounding) and discussion of point specific incentives (needs/ wants/ desires) of farm community

XI. Areas of Interest at Field Work Site

-Farmer

-Family of farmer

-Field hands

-Members of community

-old, young, men, women, leaders

-Participants at farmers marketà those that own the farms and those that work at them

XII. Terms to be Defined

-sustainable agriculture

-organic agriculture

-Pesticide-free agriculture

- ‘chemically-aware’ agriculture

- Cultivation: Shifting, Fallow, Continuous

-HYVs

-Multiple Cropping: Sequential, Intercropping, Relay

-Green Revolution

-Rice based cropping systems

-Intensive farming

-Intensification: Input, Output

-IPM Program

-agroecosystem

-ecosystem

-Agriculture

-Productivity

-Farmer

-monoculture

-irrigation: Surface, subsurface, sprinkler, drip

-Field Flooding: Controlled, basin, border strip, furrow, corrugation and surge

-Rice: wet rice, dry rice

-green manure

-pest/predator relationship

-fertilizer

-Disease resistance

-drought resistance

-pest resistance

- Pest

-Weed

-hybrid rice

-tillage

-spring infestation

-puddling

XIII. Things to Do

-Get in touch with NGO working on sustainable agriculture in Chiang Mai

-Visit field work site

-Literature review

-Visit farmers market

-Learn to speak Thai

Thursday October 4, 2007

Sawatdii kha,

I have officially moved into my new apartment! The apartment itself is comfortable and hopefully soon I will find some kind of adhesive so I can put things on my walls. I have a view of Doi Suthep to my right and Thanon Neimenhaiman to my left. I'm on the sixth floor and its just high enough that you can see the mountain range to the left, as well, I don't know what the range is called but its really gorgeous none-the-less...

This is a photo of my home stay mom (phii Jiip) and my home stay sister (may).

When we took this picture we had all been laughing hysterically because the little sister Miin (to the left) was in a terrible mood and was being ridiculous. I think this picture really captures the true creepiness of the creepy dog, enjoy.


This is a picture of my home stays moms raan tat phom (beauty shop), which was the front of my house.

This is inside the first floor of the house.

This is the other side of the first floor, which Phii Jip used as the washing station in her raan tat phom.

This is my new apartment! It looks really plain right now, but hopefully I'll get some adhesive tape and hang up some posters and drapes.

This is a view of our beautiful pool from my terrace.

This is the view from my terrace, looking over thanon Neimanheiman.

This is the view from the other side of my terrace overlook out to Doi Suthep (my favorite mountain).

Enjoy the photos.