Burger King - "Whopper Virgins"? Seriously?

SFS feels a bit outraged by Burger King's new "Whopper Virgins" advertising campaign ("documentary.") Though we may be a little bit behind the fast food news curve, we just caught wind of this today and wanted to make a statement.

This video is just a small (though at the same time quite excessive) example of the fast food industry's distorted thinking. By presenting a misleading "documentary" about the "cultural exchange" between Burger King and indigenous communities they are simply covering up for a ad campaign directed at competition with McDonalds (is this anything new?). Apparently the fast food hamburger is a staple of America's "cultural cuisine"?

As P Nok explains, Burger King is "taking advantage of others by using 'research' that is really just advertising, having consumers at home watch it and convince them that Burger King's food is 'good.' Also, by having Hmong people and others eat it - for the first time - they allow these communities to know about it and exploit indigenous peoples' lack of knowledge about foods outside of their communities. The producers knew what the responses were that they wanted, they got them and made the film. I don't take Thai food to the U.S. and have others eat it and then laugh at them. I want to use this video to educate village kids about the importance of local food and the intentions of fast food corporations." (call this the positive side of the film? educational use for our Kids Love Nature club)

P Tip also questions "where was the village headman in the process?" - in Thailand, before something like this would have happened, the village headman would definitely have had a say - "the headman probably got a lot of money (or what villagers would consider a lot of money) to allow Burger King to do this, so the community leaders are also at fault." Money is certainly a driving force, especially in Thailand, where the economy is feeling the effects of the global economic crisis in a very real way.

Burger King almost takes us into the postmodern realm of total irony and disconnect, until our conscience realizes how exploitative and offensive this advertising campaign really is. (Though given the irony in previous ad campaigns featuring "The Burger King" and "Whopper Freak Out", it's not surprising that this element seems to carry over into their "documentary.") Further, it's disappointing to see Stacy Peralta involved - an award winning director who is known for making genuine, serious documentaries like Dogtown and Z Boys and Riding Giants - where is his integrity?

Though sometimes its easy to think that we are moving away from colonialist (capitalist) fetishism and beginning to respect cultures in the Global South, Burger King feels the need to have people wear traditional clothing in their sterile "taste test" rooms while jabbing at the foreign, unsafe, industrial foods. Are we supposed to be impressed by Burger King? Am I supposed to want to go eat their industrial food?

After seeing Hmong communities in Northern Thailand in this ad, we forwarded the ad along to NGOs that we know who work in that region. Empower Foundation, which works with sex workers throughout Thailand on safe and fair standards in their industry and equal rights in society, responded:

"Comments after being viewed by group sex workers from various hill tribes and ethnicities....
We think they want to make us hill tribe people look stupid, but we see that we are very polite people...we know its rude to open our mouths wide enough to eat their hamburgers.... of course we are too polite to tell them their food tastes like our baby's shit...and even when they are so uncivilized to eat our food using spoons!! ...we did not laugh at them or tell them how "amazing" this was to us!! We also laugh to hear us speaking Thai and showing Thai culture like waiing ... not our culture at all! So after the millions of dollars they spent on this ...what did we get...a school? a road? a clinic? or just a WHOPPER BIG JOKE to tell the next generation! Don't worry ...we won't be able to afford their hamburgers for generations yet and anyway most of us are denied any identity documents and have no freedom of travel so we won't be turning up at a store near you soon!"

This is a very powerful response from some of Thailand's most marginalized people and we should be proud of their strength and humor in the face of such infuriating ignorance. Unfortunately what consumers don't see in the Burger King commercials are the real situations that these communities are in, the impacts of environmental destruction, tourism and unequal economic growth (Thailand has a very high rate of income inequality).

However, Food First's response from Dec. 10 (Slow Food USA makes a number of valid points as well), speaks more directly to these issues:

When Fast Food Fights

by Eric Holt-Gimenez, PhD. and Annie Shattuck

Burger King’s newest ad campaign, a pseudo-scientific documentary featuring the world's last “hamburger virgins” as they compare the taste of Big Macs to Whoppers, has drawn media fire—perhaps because the whole idea is so silly, embarrassingly extravagant, and blandly devious. For readers who haven't seen the ad, it features villagers in Northern Thailand, Greenland and Romania graciously receiving their first taste of that icon of American food—the hamburger.

Apparently, the intellectual authors of this tasteless taste test were unaware that they were going dumb in the midst of a global food crisis. While they spent millions of dollars happily tracking down people with no “hamburger awareness” the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has to go begging because they can only get one thirtieth of the money they need to rebuild the developing world’s shattered food systems. Though Burger King studiously avoided doing taste tests with poor villagers, hunger and poverty are very real in the countries they visited. Hunger is also a reality here in the United States where 36 million people are “food insecure” (that’s USDA-speak for “hungry”).

When we look behind the hamburger hype, what seems like good, clean, inter-cultural fun is neither good nor clean nor much fun. The fast food industry depends on giant polluting feedlots that consume 70% of the world's grain and are filled to bursting with animals strung-out on steroids and hormones. The lettuce and the tomatoes for much of the fast food industry are harvested by men and women working under what Representative Barney Frank has called “slave or near-slave labor.” In Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been campaigning for years for a 1-cent per pound increase in wages. Small wonder Burger King didn’t ask them to participate in the taste test—oh, that’s right, they are too hamburger literate. In fact, they could probably write volumes about fast food.

Whopper Virgins is not about friendly, exotic people dressed up in their traditional Sunday best as they experience the joy of scarfing down 360 calories of fat. It is about getting us to consume even more than the 270 lbs of meat we average a year as Americans. Is this the industry’s response to “Super-sized Me”? Why compete to promote the over-consumption of fast food when one in six American kids are already obese and type 2 diabetes is going up at a rate of 4.6% a year?
The irony of this fast food fight is that no matter which burger comes out on top, the result is the same. When McWhopper wins—we lose.


If you don't already boycott fast food, consider starting with Burger King!

Smiley Garbage

Here's our new video introducing our Smiley Garbage program. The program is essentially a small-scale food waste recycling system, which collects wet garbage from urban communities twice a week, converts it into organic compost, which is then used in our farmers' fields to fertilize their rice and vegetable crops. Through the network-creating efforts of SFS - farmers, consumers and the local public health office have really come together - making the program a big success. By diverting perfectly good compost-able material from winding up in the Surin landfill (which is already a serious public health issue) and lowering the input costs of SFS farmers, we are working to create a closed-cycle process in which the environment and communities (urban and rural) benefit.

Organic Rice Bran Oil

Remember the new rice bran oil press that Rice Fund invested in back in October?

Well, it's been up and running for a month and a half now, and after a lot of quality control work and an inspection from Organic Agriculture Certification Thailand (ACT), we've got a finished product! Sales have gotten off to a solid start, as local consumers (and a few big orders from Bangkok) have been impressed by it's antioxidants' effectiveness. Our "Organic Rice Bran Oil" is the latest product developed by Rice Fund and SFS and we hope for it to be a solid source of funds for SFS project.

Plus, the "waste product" of compressed rice bran chips are still of perfectly good use to Rice Fund members. P' Kanya has been mixing them into her organic pig feed - these little guys below have so much energy! Maybe some of those antioxidants are carrying over in the bran chips?

SFS at the National Human Rights Commission

On the day of the nomination of Thailand's new prime minister, it seems somewhat fitting to write about some recent human rights-related work. Last Monday, SFS had the privilege to attend the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for a meeting with representatives from peoples' movements around Isaan. Thanks to the work of the ciee student group, and their research in mid-November, a series of beautifully-printed human rights reports (once SFS has a digital copy of the completed report, we'll post it up here) have been completed in collaboration with the Lampaniang Conservation and Restoration Group, the Khon Kaen Slum Revitalization Network and United Communities Network, the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (TNP+ Isaan), the Committee of the Mun Rice Wetlands Conservation Network (CMRECN-Rasi), the Mun River Basic Community Preservation Project (Pak Mun) and Surin Farmers Support(SFS)/Rice Fund Surin. The reports were presented as working drafts and use the ESCR framework.

Using our new reports, each group presented it's current work and began planning for future use. Our audience in the afternoon session included representatives from Amnesty International and the NHRC. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive, pointing out that the new reports are a valuable basis for developing and strengthening villagers' human rights demands. The reports can be used in the future to pressure the government to act, or plan for national-level rights in development.
Regarding agriculture (above, notes from the morning session), Ajaan Siwapaa pointed out that with some issues, the state need to be involved, but with some issues we are capable of addressing ourselves. I interpreted this statement to mean that members of SFS can practice organic farming independently and expand their movement, but the environment in which we farm (the seeds other farmers use or the pesticides/herbicides sprayed on their fields) is something that the government can have an important role in determining. Ajaan Saneh also pointed out the reality that the notion of human rights is still unclear in the U.S. - he used the example of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and how it has been used to exploit Basmati farmers in India (the same is true of Jasmine and Rice Tec, an American rice company).A lot of interesting issues and topics for debate were brought up throughout the afternoon (and into the evening). Participants all recognize the power of human rights, which can be above national or local laws, to affect change in society. But other villagers need to be confident in their knowledge of their rights and be able to advise with others as their circumstances change. From here on out, it will be about using the NHRC as a facilitator, as well as NGOs in local areas to coordinate our efforts. An important agreement among the groups represented at the meeting was also achieved - we will meet together on December 21st to further discuss plans for a "Human Rights Network of the Northeast." Hopefully it will be a productive event that brings together people fighting different issues, but unified under the same causes of community rights, justice and environmental conservation.

In addition to this report, I also wanted to post links to two important issues related to International Human Rights day, which was on Dec. 10:
The exclusion of Indigenous Peoples' rights at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland, and the ILRF Report on the five worst multinational corporations for union organizing (the majority of which are food corporations!)

New Sustainable Agriculture Video

(Click above to watch the video at aan.surin)

Here's a transcript of our members' words:
P Batipat, Samrong: There are no chemical fertilizers or pesticides in our fields. We're creating fields that grow food for families. This allows us to be self-reliant!
P Pakphum, Tamor: We stay with our communities, with our way of life, and don't have to find employment in other places.
Paw Tama, Tatoom: Our health is perfect.
P Bresong, Tatoom: The soil and water improves and has more nutrients.
Paw Uta, Tatoom: We have low costs of inputs, don't have to buy fertilizer because we've got cows and buffalos. We take their manure and put it in the fields.
Paw Roon, Tamor: We grow so much food, we give our surplus to other members of our group, and tell them, 'just take it, eat it!'
P Kanya, Tabthai: This is soemthing to teach our children - making compost or just working in the fields - our children come and learn with us.

Conclusions? Notes from the Alternative Market Discussion

On December 3rd, SFS and Rice Fund Surin hosted a discussion focusing on our alternative market work. P Than, manager of Rice Fund, brought us together to examine past experience and think about the future: Where do we go from here?

For the first hour, P Than gave a history of SFS’ philosophy, as it has sought to connect sustainable community development with alternative market. The goal of developing alternative markets was to solve problems in the Thai economy through sustainable, fair agriculture. It is work aimed at society: Fair Trade, safe food, a safe environment and preserved ecology. Rice Fund works to create strong farmers’ groups - through production and marketing – alternative development has emerged. The Kao Hom Store was opened in 1994 to sell Rice Fund members’ organic rice in the city and connect with consumers (The latter, however, has come later than expected: with the Smiley Garbage project, as consumers connect to SFS through weekly food scrap recycling and newsletter updates). The Green Market was opened almost 6 years ago, because selling rice is only one part of the farmers’ economy – they only sell once a year – selling produce weekly at the Green Market helps to deal with debt and save money for family use. Initially, SFS assumed that women would be the sole vendors, but it has grown to include husbands and children, helping sell goods, and prepare treats. The Green Market has also been an opportunity for children to learn about markets. In recent years, the Green Market has come to focus on local food and community resource issues – it is about the energy crisis and environmental issues, as well as food security and food safety. The markets’ development also comes from producer-consumer relationships, through requests for certain vegetables and produce. The Green Market has also connected with other organizations like NET Foundation, the Herbal House, as well as the local government, and the public health office.

P Than's history was concluded with two points. First, for consumers, what does the producer-consumer relationship mean? Second, how do we expand and improve alternative markets? Create policies? Work towards the “consumers’ cooperative” idea?

P Eyat responded with some fire. In managing the process, it can’t just be “green” - there needs to be “red” and “blue,” as well (what did these colors refer to, by the way?) The burden on NGOs is that we have the farmers' products and we need to build a bridge to connect with consumers: it will be about food sovereignty, community-oriented markets - not just expansion – we need to continually think about what needs improvement. What else is connected to alternative markets? Do we need to think more about the role of the state?

P Eyat later continued by distinguishing between the Western thinking (a mono-thinking) and Eastern thinking (an integrated thinking) about agricultural systems. He questioned Fair Trade: is exporting white rice only connecting with “Western thinking?” Seasonal foods and diversity, or what plant varieties are beneficial, consumers don’t understand these concepts and the new generation isn’t used to local varieties.

P Dtoh responded that changing producers and consumers ways of thinking is a movement. The alternative market is not just a market, but it’s a movement, one in response to the changes of the Green Revolution (chemical abuse, industrialization, ecological destruction). The Green Market, for example, needs to be distinguished from other ostensibly “community markets” that sell goods bought at Makro or Tesco. It is also a rural-urban movement, as the Thursday mobile market connects farmers with news and information. Thankfully, P Dtoh also clarified the meanings of “green,” “red,” and “blue.” “Green” means alternative, “red” means communist, and “blue” means capitalist. Though these could be read in a variety of other ways…

Dr. Sonchai suggested that the name “Green Market” be changed to something like the “Clean Vegetables Market.” Using the Chinese vegetables sold by farmers as an example, he pointed how they sell quickly because they are what consumers are used to. Further, after the Green Market, consumers go to the conventional markets to find what they can’t buy at the Green Market. He questioned how much consumers actually ask of farmers – do they really question how it was produced or where it comes from? Consumers aren’t looking enough at the process and look only at the final product. A lot of “Green Market consumers” also go to Big C and Tesco because prices are low, and they need to drive motorcycles and cars to get out to the edge of the city. But they don’t think about how this is a waste of fuel and time. In this way, the alternative market becomes: “buy here or not, whatever,” and this is an “alternative.” We need to continue to examine: why do consumers come to the Green Market?

He also discussed how capitalism is made up of both money and knowledge, and the latter must be better established with Green Market consumers, as this is a powerful way to compare the Green Market with conventional markets. Make produce safety the basis for the market, to distinguish it, make it clear, true and believable.

P Nok joined in, pointing out that the Green Market is a tool in the movement, though it isn’t clearly showing how society’s thinking about food and agriculture is changing. People know the market is made up of organic agriculture, but beyond that its unclear. Further, logos (EU/NOP, Fair Trade) aren’t really representative of the movement, of an alternative.











P’ Jamlong, of the Province Organic Standards office commented that the market is difficult on producers – it continues to push mono-production and solving this problem is increasingly difficult. Consumers have expanded beyond the reach of producers – they determine what is to be produced and sold at markets.

P’ Kanya, a Rice Fund committee member, responded to critiques of consumer behavior by pointing out how much has changed in the village. Her farmers’ group has grown from 8 to 50 members, so though consumer might not fully understand, farmers are beginning to see something in their alternative approach. "Have we been successful? Using the family as the basis for learning, and given that we’ve learned a lot, I think we have had success." In agreeing with Dr. Sonchai, she pointed out how her produce is for everyone and it is fair, but it is important to get consumers understanding what is behind the produce. If consumers truly understand, they’ll keep coming to the market, and we'll generate more value in the process. Further, the market is a space for all parties to come together – NGOs, government and farmers – and this is a true alternative.

P' Pakphum, a Rice Fund member and organic inspection committee member, questioned the use of the market to solve the problems in society. Consumers and new generation farmers all like Chinese vegetables, but they are really difficult to grow – they are risky to produce and farmers need to use a lot of chemicals. It is an unsustainable market with too much pressure of producers. The problems in society - growing these crops because of market demands, then taking urban employment and leaving the community because of debt – need to be solved by creating alternatives oriented at solving them, not just creating an alternative. Then, in terms of information and news, farmers need to be able to produce what requires the least investment and can be grown in season – this is the information that supports alternative markets. Conventional production for the market uses information, but it’s not beneficial to the producer – Fair Trade rice comes with information, but local produce doesn’t yet do the same.

P’ Yae, the AAN Surin representative (and fellow blogger!), added to distinguishing the Green Market, in that it can serve to distribute movement information and the substance of the movement is significant. We agree on the future for the Green Market: we need to raise the level of local food in the city – show how our pork is different from CP pork. We can focus on an issue with power and a lot of energy right now – local food – and bring consumers in.










P' Tip pointed out consumers need to be not just consumers of food, but also consumers of information. The Green Market has created consumers’ groups like “Smiley Garbage.” People in this meeting had critiqued that there’s “no diversity” at the Green Market, but farmers used to plant cabbage, Chinese veggies and carrots and it destroyed local ecology in the past. We've tried to plant them organically, but with no success. This is something we simply cannot respond to in terms of consumers' demands. We need to develop a way of distributing information about what our movement means. If we give information about the use of chemicals (spraying carrots with herbicides and pesticides), consumers may not go to the conventional market for them.


So, while there was a lot of interesting discussion about what the alternative market has been, currently is, and could be, it's difficult to come to any clear conclusions. Further, the discussion was far too focused on the Green Market. In the coming months, we're planning to develop informational brochures or labels for vegetables to get information to consumers about why Green Market vendors grow the things they do. At the Kao Hom store, we're hoping to expand into a consumers' center, with information and places to sit, learn and discuss different issues. Surin lacks a permanent forum to educate others about our food and agriculture system, hopefully last week's meeting will contribute to establishing a real alternative for consumers.

The Fire Still Burns: Reflections from the NGO "New Generation" Conference

Below are the collected notes and reflections from the NGO “New Generation” Conference, from November 29 to December 2. Our group of 30 young activists and organizers - brought together by the Thai Volunteer Service – spent four days together learning, exchanging and debating about our sustainable community development work throughout Thailand. Groups including Highland People Taskforce, Assembly of the Poor, NET Foundation, La Via Campesina Youth, Community Forest Network, Sustainable Agriculture Foundation, Surindra Rajapat University and several others. We met with urban communities, Lablae and Nong Pam and a rural community, managing a community forest, named Puu Khaam.

Lablae community: situated on a hillside next to the Ubon train station and the PTT oil company’s storage area. For more than 10 years, it has fought for clean water, improvement of community infrastructure and land take-over by PTT.

“Poverty and the Community Rights are the same issue” – P Jamnong

While bureaucrats and government officers give excuses for doing nothing, does the community organizer’s work lead to sustainability? To what extent does sustainability come from within the community? Managing community resources (a form of resistance to the oil corporation, PTT) also represents the values of the community’s culture and attention paid to not destroy their natural surroundings – namely, a tributary of the Mun River just at the base of Lablae community. Independently recycling the city’s waste is also a form of resistance, one that has gained the attention of Ubon’s local government: they are now trying to implement their own recycling programs.

Creating a network of urban communities - one that focuses not just on issues, but recognizes the problems are only one part of the network - has opened individual communities to exchange, brought collaboration with the public and generated new relationships. Yet the network still uses this open approach to help generate knowledge for individuals and help them be confident in that knowledge. This allows them to move forward with campaigning to develop their community rights’ demands and policy ideas. Yet an important question was raised: how do these processes get applied to other issues in other areas (environmental ones in rural areas, for example)? Where are the connections?

P Jamnong on the role of NGOs in the community: “we need to be clear about who we are and what we do when we enter into a community.” Regarding issues: “we can’t just put our finger on it and say: yeah, this is it! No, we need to think about what has come before - the history - to really know the issue and be able to work on it.”

Changes occur on a small-scale, but they aren’t happening because of their small size – it’s because of the structural changes that preceded them: build a railway to export goods, and after industrializing the agriculture system and forcing everyone into the market – surplus production for corporate profit. This process gives value to the lands owned by railroad companies and other companies that begin looking for land to use for storage. This process is also represented in a glocal rural-urban migration and relocation to the last possible places – the spaces between roads, the railway, roofs, etc. There are 3,000 communities considered at risk due to expanding migration and destruction of previous communities.

Foreign investment in border provinces and ADB-financed roads connect economic refugees from Cambodia to Khon Kaen. Lablae community is a small, powerful example of the resistance to the changing political, economic and trans-national landscape of SE Asia, the movements of industrialized commerce and the pathways/railways of economic growth.

Nong Pam community: lead by a group of women living in the Nong Sa slum community, they independently built homes on unoccupied land, resisting pressure from local government and the landowners. They now seek to develop a truly “alternative community.”

“Poverty empowers us [women] to speak out” – the Heng Mae (“Mother Power”) group, who lead the new community, are using their woman-ness to make changes for their homes and to develop the community. Reminds me of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement (MST).

Villagers need a way to access human rights: create a school, a way to educate about rights (more than just laws). For example, community welfare needs to be more than just donating a baht a day to the community bank, villagers need resource support.

The land of the Nong Pam community was originally owned by a wealthy family from Southern Thailand that made no use of it (apparently they were considering turning it into a “Fishing Park”) and in response, the community members feel justified in their original “occupation” of the land. It isn’t a case of using state land and needing their permission, the community simply wanted to make the land their own.

Money from the state used to be viewed as a gift to be proud of - to be satisfied with - but these villagers have realized the consequences of this thinking: debt (especially in post-Thaksin times). The people who haven’t left the old slum community (Nong Sa) and haven’t joined them, they haven’t changed their way of thinking: “they still believe they’ll receive 1 million baht.” In turn, Nong Pam community members can’t talk to them about joining in their movement, but they can still talk about land issues in a broader context - "Politicians want to keep things the way they are and slum community members remain oppressed by class."

After the struggle for their land, it is essential to have the next generation remain on the land and their children seem encouraged to stay – but if they leave, they need to find the right kind of people to come and join them. Their intention to develop an alternative community is defined by community ownership, self-reliance, preservation of culture and local knowledge, and participation/discussion about community issues.

Puu Khaam community: a 200 year-old village, of a nine-part community forest network. Yet working together in the network is a process that involves financial and organizational obstacles. They’ve never had a budget, but instead work from their desire to base efforts in the community culture. They’ve learned a lot from other groups (including the network in Surin), but want to make their “solution” their own and then connect it to other groups in resistance – Udorn, Khon Kaen and Sakhorn. (Left, massages for Yaai Lit, "I Not Can Stop Love You")


The “Green Isaan” Project brought Eucalyptus to the region by the late 1980s (after significant deforestation during the early years of Thailand’s Green Revolution). Rubber was originally promoted to help and develop, but after initially high investment per tree and the years of waiting, it has only generated debt. Cassava is increasingly planted, despite its impacts on the forest and volatile prices, which means new debt and the search for employment in cities. Villagers have recognized how monocropping is essentially government policy, though it generates profits for others through planting these cash crops.

Sustainability: the involvement of the next generation, creating a real system for managing the forest and raising the level of appreciation for the community’s local culture and knowledge. The community forest really needs to be owned by all of the people in the village. Resource management is in the villagers’ hearts, and the idea is to make all members of the group a committee member, a president. The importance of a community forest is that it is a concrete basis, which allows villagers to not take advantage of others, strengthens self-reliance through supporting natural systems and it is a force against the crises in society. “If the forest is perfect, our stomachs must be filled”: food and energy are a burden and an issue villagers live with everyday – the forest can’t be preserved while the fields go to waste.

“The community forest is like a supermarket: it isn’t just trees, it’s all the living things on the land and those who use the forest are those who really need to” and in a later exchange, “we don’t say that cutting trees isn’t allowed - this may lead to other impacts – but management needs to be in our hearts.”

The gathering ended with a final discussion among each region attending (north, northeast, central/south). We raised the questions: how will we use what we’ve learned? What’s the next move? The “new generation” is in this work for real, but there’s no real network between areas and our work continues to be under-funded, so young NGOs are unable to pursue their ideas. We need to start going outside of local works’ focus, especially in connecting with university students interested in becoming NGOs. A first step: creating an e-mail group to coordinate work, called "prajanyim" @ Google Groups (named after the smiling moon above us, during our nights in Puu Khaam).

One of our friends from northern Thailand got a text message that read: "The moon and stars are smiling for us, even now the world is so messy, but last night we saw a little happiness become true : )." As the moon smiled down on our new generation of NGOs, the People Power Party (PPP), the Machima Thipatai party and the Chart Thai party were found guilty of vote buying and dissolved, their party leaders banned from politics for five years (And, the PAD protests finally ended!).

Biodiesel at Jalurn Suk School

Just wanted to post a few photos from last week's biodiesel lesson at Jalurn Suk School. P' Nok, SFS coordinator, came along as our "guest lecturer" to teach the students how to make biodiesel for their families' tractors. She also gave the students a really clear lesson about the range of plants used for biofuels.

The English lesson taught a number of new plant names: Palm, Peanut, Rice Bran, Jatropha, Sunflower and Soybean - while some of these crops can be detrimental to the environment when grown as large monocultures and chemical fertilizers/pesticides are use, and palm is ill-suited to northeastern Thailand, farmers can plant all of them and are able to produce their own plant oils for use in cooking and locally producing biofuels. While the latter possibility is still a long ways away, SFS farmers are already growing Peanut and rice bran from the mill is already being processed into rice bran oil.

Also part of the English lesson: Sugarcane, Cassava and Corn - these crops are used to make ethanol, which farmers cannot produce themselves. When farmers grow them, chemical fertilizer and pesticides are required because they aren't suited to the northeastern soils and climate. The prices for these crops are also increasingly volitile. Yet they are expanding throughout the region, as farmers are attracted by the possibility of earning high prices and lower labor inputs per rai.Over-used cooking oil - bad for your health and can't be made into biodiesel

That bottle's got a mixture of sodium hydroxide (6.5 g.) and methyl alchohol (200 mL)Pouring the re-heated, recycled veggie oil into the sodium hydroxide/methyl alchohol mixture

Mixing up the sodium hydroxide/methyl alchohol with the re-heated, recycled veggie oilParty time!

Biodiesel is not a weapon!