DEVELOPMENT-THAILAND: Rice Culture Withering Away, Warn Experts

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Chayanit Poonyarat

BANGKOK, Jan 24 2003 (IPS) - Rice is not just a cereal but the essence of life that has shaped the culture of the Thai people over centuries, but this value is fast withering away under commercialism and modernisation, experts here say.

”Rice has played considerable role in our culture, but how many people today realise its significance?” asks Dr Kwanchai Gomez, the secretary general of the Thai Rice Foundation, which aims to raise public awareness about the importance of rice and rice farmers.

As people in this rice-consuming and producing country go by their day-to-day work, ”most of us take rice and its culture for granted that we don’t see how important it is and never question how to live without one”, Kwanchai says in an interview.

Kwanchai and other rice experts warn that the rich cultural heritage that comes with rice – be it familiarity with the crop, its rituals, social value or its role in the villages – is fast disappearing from this South-east Asian country, which is among the world’s largest rice exporters.

Rice is believed to have been planted in the region that is now Thailand since 3,500 BC. It has probably since then become central to Thai food. Today, more than 60 percent of Thailand’s 63 million people are farmers, most of them dependent on rice farming.

”My family, generation after generation, has been dependent on rice farming. It is probably the only thing I know the best,” says 65-year-old Suwan Kathawut, chairman of Thai Farmers Association which have about 3,000 farmer members. ”For many of us, especially in the past, rice farming is not only earning for living.”

Traditionally, there are blessings at every stage of the rice growing season, from planting to harvesting, Suwan explains. Many of the rituals pay respect and gratitude to ‘Mae Posop’, the ‘Rice Mother’ believed to be the protector of rice.

”We believe this will bring us prosperity and wealth in return,” says Suwan.

These rituals also strengthen unity in the community. When rice is ready for harvest, the farmers prepare food for neighbours who come to help in the rice fields. Exchanging and sharing labour like this, the farm folk move from field to field until they have brought in the harvest of everyone in the village.

The closest that many Thais today, especially those in the cities, get to the country’s rice culture is the annual Royal Ploughing Ceremony that marks the start of the rice growing season around May. The ceremony, done in the presence of the king in Bangkok, is done to produce bountiful crops and to boost farmers’ morale.

”The turning point (in the dwindling rice culture) was in 1947, when rice farming in Thailand changed from a self-sufficient one into commercially based one,” Dr Ngampit Satsanguan of sociology and anthropology department of Chulalongkorn University here told a seminar last week.

”New innovations of irrigation systems and high-technology machinery have replaced all mass labour and being dependent on Mother Nature,” says Ngampit, who last year released her anthropological study on ‘Rice Culture in Thai Society’.

Farmers have also become more individualised and competitive to each other, she says. No longer are gatherings seen among farmers in the community, and tradition and beliefs have been disappearing as well.

But this new approach to rice farming may not be as successful as it may seem, some farmers’ groups say. Without sufficient knowledge and experience, many farmers put in large investments only to find out them go to naught.

”Most of us (then) access loans to continue the business, which will only result in more debt. Some of us today don’t even have our own land, while others found that increased production will only result in poor prices and more dependence on government,” says Suwan.

Yet although many rice farmers are struggling to survive, Thailand exported more than 7.2 million tonnes of rice valued at 1.5 billion U.S. dollars last year, according to the Department of Foreign Trade.

”We expect to export more than 7.5 million tonnes of rice this year, when we are opening more new markets in China, Middle East and Africa,” says the director general of the department of foreign trade, Rachane Potjanasuntorn.

”This should have already proven that we are taking a wrong step by focusing too much on exports and raising revenues for the country, but at the same time, our farmer friends are left miserable,” says Kwanchai.

She adds that giving state price support is not a sustainable way to help farmers, and urges the government to support farmers by giving them knowledge and suitable technology instead.

Farmers need to know not only how to work in the farm, but how to combine new technology with local wisdom, argues Kwanchai. They need to know as much about sustaining the environment as they do marketing.

”We can’t survive only with pride as the pillar of the state but having nothing to eat. In fact, there is nothing much left to be proud of,” remarks Suwan.

”Many farmers have given up on their farms and prefer to make their destiny in big cities. Others continue as peasants only because they have no other choice,” explains Ngampit. ”For many of them, this is the only skill they know.”

As for the younger generation of Thais, she says, they are not interested in working in the farm anymore. They have seen and heard enough of their parents’ difficulties and do not see it as the way to a good life.

That, Ngampit explains, does not bode well for the socio-cultural value of rice in Thailand. In her study on a village that has been farming rice for 400 years in Ayutthaya, 76 km north of Bangkok, she said: ”Rice culture is predicted to disappear from this village within the next 30 to 40 years.”