Now, with the world in recession and growth fizzling even in once fast-growing emerging economies, “only the food factories are still looking for workers.”
“The chicken factory said they need a lot of people,” he said as he registered at a government job-search center last month. “I’m waiting for their call.”
I wonder who's chicken factory that might be? After a bland and broad comparison of Asian countries' responses to different economic and social crises, the article concludes,
Thailand is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia to offer unemployment benefits. But it is not much of a safety net, said Mr. Wittaya, the former camera-factory worker who is now having to consider a career in cutting up chickens or baking bread.
In another option, his grandmother owns rice fields in northeastern Thailand and as a last resort he might return. But there is a problem: He’s never farmed before. “I don’t know how,” he said.
It's disheartening to read about this Isaan person's "last resort" to return to the rice fields, but it's a result of significant changes in rural Thailand's systems of production and agricultural livelihoods. Given the debt and burdens of farming, there is little incentive for the new generation to keep farming. Further, CP chicken factories are symbolic of the consolidation of farmers' labor and resources (in place of diverse, regionalized foodsheds) as farmers are brought into binding contracts that control farm-gate prices while feed and fertilizer are provided by CP at prices set by the corporation.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis meant a major increase in "underemployed" people in northeastern Thailand, and for our network, the years following the crisis were an opportunity to create new alternatives for struggling small-scale farming families. A number of Rice Fund members returned to Surin in 1997 and have never looked back, pursuing self-sufficiency through sustainable agriculture. Though most rural youth view urban jobs in factories as more respectable professions - less labor intensive and more potential to make good money - returning home can be an opportunity to change one's life and learn "how" to farm (again).
In other news...
There's a new video/slide show about the CP's "Farm to Table" process. It consists of trucking feed to farms (where did the feed come from?), trucking raw products to mills, and then trucking packaged foods to CP "fresh marts." It raises an interesting thought - does this "transparency" in industrial agriculture make consumers any more content with Thailand's food system? We're used to not knowing where exactly or how exactly our chicken, fish or pork is raised, so by showing us the CAFOs and grain refineries, agribusiness is being somewhat forthright. Yet behind this greenwash is on-going exploitation of small-scale farmers and the environment in Thailand and abroad.
Despite promoting this system as a sustainable "Kitchen of the World," we still have an opportunity for us to propose an alternative "Farm to Green Market" approach, where producers and consumers can meet each other half way:
To sum this ramble up, Isaan's youth, if (or, as) they return home from Bangkok are presented with the opportunity to pursue farming as a career. Though they are unlikely to consider organic farming, contract farming for companies like CP is becoming increasingly the option of choice. Our network can work against this process only in small steps: opening community learning centers, instructing on sustainable techniques, building local, alternative markets, and campaigning against the exploitation of small farmers.
Monday, SFS will wrap up it's series of Organic Learning Centers with session 3, and I hear that there will be a number of young people in the group. We're committed to making the session a basis for their transition to organic farming and building their own sustainable livelihoods. Let's hope our efforts help allow other farmers to be a little more likely to consider organic farming as well.
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