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Every day, the youth of Huay Hin Lad Nai community go into the forest to find food. The forest serves as the local supermarket. Accompanying them into the forest today are students from Chiang Mai University, who are part of school's Ethnic Studies and Development program. Both the students and the youth group woke up early at 5:00 a.m to go and learn in the forest together. The local youth shared stories about shifting cultivation, properties of variety of vegetables and herbs, and their way of living with the forest and nature.
Here in Taiwan, social networking has not totally retreated due to social distancing. Many things still move on ... just behind the masks and the precautionary measures.
These pictures show the day when people came to build the cucumber shed together. This space is more than a farm. It's a public space that provides the healing effects of the collective work of nature and fellowship, especially at this time of pandemic.
After more than two months of self-confinement, we went out on 10 May 2020 with the younger ones to buy plants. We went out with a purpose. We decided to set up a small garden in the courtyard of our house. The next few days were very exciting as we collected and transformed many objects that were lying around the house and used them to decorate our plants (tires, empty bottles, etc).
When we bought the plants, we met Mbaye, who has a real garden where he grows vegetables and fruit trees. I was impressed by his knowledge, his courage, and his ability to maintain by irrigation this very beautiful and green garden, in an arid area where it only rains for three months.
COVID-19 is not the only challenge that common people across the world have been faced with. But there are places where this problem has been compounded due to other kinds of natural challenges felt locally. This has been particularly so in the state of Assam in India where annual flooding ravaged lives and livelihood. The worst hit have been the ones settled in low lying flood prone zones across the state, making it simply impossible for many to engage in cultivation of the staple food crop, rice.
Ma Mya Than, 58 years old, is a middle class Rakhine (Arakanese) lady who lives in Buthidaung, a town in northern Rakhine. She used to sell various varieties of rice. Rakhine, situated on the western coast of Myanmar, is rich with natural resources including fish, timber, oil and gas. According to her, although Rakhine exported many acres of rice under Burmese Socialist Programme Party for years, there were around five types of rice that farmers in Rakhine mainly grew.
Daw May Myo Khine, 49 years old, who once lived in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine, and whose grandfather and father owned many rice farms explained that under the Burmese Socialist Programme Party, some farmers grew two different kinds of rice. They grew low quality rice, which they would sell to the government at the prescribed price and good quality variety, which they would eat themselves. The government gave farmers loans called “Amadaw Kyay” for growing rice. In return, the farmers had to sell the harvested rice to the government.
Woman Led Self-Reliance Family
I would like to share something with you about an ethnic Lahu family in Southern Shan State, Myanmar. This is a women-led family and they are relying on their own farm for their family foods and income generation. She is Daw Thida Aung with 52 years old and her husband is a religious leader. The family consists of four family members with her husband, a daughter and son.
Tea cultivation is one of the main rural livelihoods seen in Kyaukme Township, Northern Shan State. It can be seen in the many hills around the area. In Kyaukme Township, tea plants have been cultivated naturally for many years. Botanically speaking, tea belongs to the genus Camellia, species Thea and family Theaceae. Tea is a perennial crop. Most tea plants are not allowed to grow more than 3 feet high. This is because tea cultivators prefer to keep the plant low as it is difficult to pick tea leaves when the tree is tall.
Tea trees are kept small by tea growers and are evergreen throughout the seasons. In their natural state, they can grow to be up to 30ft tall. However, tea growers keep their tea tress to within 4-5ft in height. This ensures that the tea trunk remains thick and encourages more leaf and branch growth. Tea growers do so to get as much leaves as possible from their trees as the leaves are the sole product of tea trees. Keeping the tea trees short makes tea harvest easier to harvest.
Each time when Hin Lad Nai villagers work on their farmland – either alone or with their friends and families, they usually practice the ceremony called ‘Hliang-Phi Jaothi’. In Hliang-Phi Jaothi they offer some of their food to the guardian spirit or ‘Phi Jaothi’ before having lunch. In practicing the ceremony, they first prepare some food on banana leaves, they pray and call on Phi Jaothi to eat the food. The eldest man from each household does this this process. He holds the rice pack (made from banana leaves), and lays it on stump before squatting down and praying.
Story from an Intercommunity Dialogue on Rice Cultures and Cultivation
Ag lainai, the ritual of cutting the first fruits of paddy
Dharitri Narzary
Suresh Godani (70), a resident of Pipariya, Madhya Pradesh, talks about the changing town-scape vis-à-vis the changes in local agricultural economy. A translated excerpt from our recorded conversation:
