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Last night SBS television news in Australia featured a story on buffalos in Thailand. According to CNN’s Dan Rivers, farmers in northern Thailand are turning to buffalos to plough their fields instead of tractors. He interviewed a local farmer, Jile Songkasri, who said that high fuel prices and the bad economy had encouraged him to dust off his old plough and harness up a buffalo. The story also featured a rather up-beat buffalo trader who said that she could not keep up with demand and a tractor owner whose business outlook was grim and who kept his fuel supply under lock and key.
It’s a nice story, in a folksy sufficiency sort of way, but I am a bit sceptical. Ploughing with buffalos is very time consuming and I suspect that only those with ample time on their hands (and relaxed agricultural schedules) will be taking it up. And there are the costs and inconveniences of supervising and feeding the buffalos. A bit of ploughing in the interim, perhaps, but I suspect that a good number of these beasts are destined to end up as larb.
But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this bovine trickle will turn into a flood as Thai agriculture responds to unprecedented energy prices. If any New Mandala readers have local information on this latest trend, I would love to hear it.
I can’t speak to the issue of Thai farming economics, but in Cambodia, where the vast majority of farmers remain smallholders, this is a very real issue and a going concern. While it sounds from the article that Thai farmers perhaps have the capital to buy buffalo and experiment with the traditional plowing method, in Cambodia – where mechanization has really only taken hold in the last ten years – the majority of those who switched to mechanical tractors are now unable to afford the switch back.
I should probably read more on the ‘sufficiency’ issue – it hasn’t seemed overly relevant to my interests in Cambodia.
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I have recently heard stories of people stealing fuel at gunpoint in rural Laos from parties perceived to have a lot of fuel. But these stories are complex and can only really be understood in the context of the particular people and motivations involved. For the purposes of this discussion, I think it is enough for me to state that what was evident in these thefts was not a desire for a return to older forms of agriculture. Rather, the motivation (even justification) seems to have been that poorer people felt left out of modern transformations, and wanted to be part of them, via force if necessary.
After all, they it was not buffalo they were stealing at gunpoint.
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I don’t think there is a widespread desire to return to traditional forms of agriculture, and for my part, I neither suggested it nor think it wise. But the current form of agriculture, at least in Cambodia (which is as different from the situations in Laos and Thailand as you suggest are the motivations among particular people), the recent switch to mechanical agriculture has been devastating.
I thoroughly agree that there is a widespread sentiment throughout the agricultural Global South that farmers have been left out of the benefits of the modernization that they see in agricultural systems in the North. They want these benefits, and frankly deserve them. On the other hand, I think it does a disservice to these same farmers to assume that they don’t see the difference between the methods of mechanical agriculture (which have been adopted in many parts of the South) and their benefits – which tend to accrue only to large, corporate landholders, at least in their extreme form.
As for theft of farming implements and commodities, I’m not sure that this anecdote really tells us much. Stealing a buffalo is much, much, more difficult than stealing gasoline, and much harder to sell (you can identify a buffalo – ever tried to identify a liter of gasoline as the same liter you purchased earlier in the day?). Rural areas are not isolated, and gasoline thefts from farmers are not necessarily being perpetrated in all cases by farmers – even though they take place in farm-dominant areas.
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For what it is worth, my observation is that plowing by using an “iron buffalo” is not that significantly faster than using a real buffalo. I am not saying there is no increase in efficiency, but I can understand how the increase in efficiency could easily be offset with significant fuel price increases to a cash starved farmer who has some time on his hands and little else.
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[…] Andrew’s recent post on the reported revival of buffalos in northern Thailand, this piece on pigs in Laos caught my attention. The relevant report comes […]
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A feature article in the Vientiane Times of Monday 7th July may be worth noting. The article is entitled ‘Simple farming methods cut production costs’, and it argues for returning to/maintaining: pooling of labour resources, use of animals to plough fields and use of organic fertiliser.
The article concludes that ‘such simple farming methods may be able to keep food prices lower, especially if farmers practice these techniques on a wide scale. They certainly have their place in today’s troubling situation of spiralling production costs, which would become history if traditional practices were restored.’
In addition to this urban and somewhat idealysed view on agriculture and rural life the article does also acknowledge the reality of (temporary) migration out or rural areas.
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“A buffalo come-back?”
I don’t think they ever left… A stark example is Bangkok where there are plenty of them! A few weeks ago one may even have spotted them surrounding the Government House…
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“Most of the …farmers originally have buffaloes and oxen just for plowing. Only 2 of them have no buffaloes but they hire tractors instead. Some local farmers have to rent buffaloes from Chai-Ta-Lay Company in Tambol Dong Khui which raises cattle for export. The rental rate of a buffalo ranges from 65 – 100 Tangs of Paddy per season.”
-From Boonpoom Senarak’s thesis on land alienation (1976).
Does anyone know the rental rate for a buffalo vs for a tractor?
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[…] week I wrote, somewhat sceptically, about a CNN report that high petrol prices in northern Thailand were encouraging a return to buffalos for ploughing. I […]
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