By Matcha Phorn-In
“I’ve been farming rice for as long as I can remember.” I’m not sure if I was four or five years old then, but I definitely hadn’t started school yet. Some days, my father would wake me up and have me lead the cows and buffaloes to the fields, especially during planting and harvesting seasons. Four-thirty in the morning was wake-up time for a little child like me and my family.
“Our rice fields are sandy soil.” In years with good rainfall, we could farm with water filling the paddies. I loved soaking in the water while transplanting rice seedlings because bending over repeatedly under the hot sun wasn’t fun at all for a child like me. But in years of drought or interrupted rains, I saw sorrow hanging over our entire family. My mother’s eyes became dimmer than anyone else’s because she loved the rice fields. They were the only inheritance her ancestors left her, apart from the deep identity of being born into a farming family.
Our fields “are not near a water source and have no irrigation canals.” Our lives are therefore 100% in nature’s hands. The most important variable is rain. It’s not enough for rain to come according to the seasons—it must also come in the right amount. No rain means no rice. Too much rain causes flooding; too little means poor yields and disease outbreaks. We are therefore extremely vulnerable to climate change.
The rice fields at my home “can only produce one crop a year during the rainy season.” As explained above, we wait for rain, and rain only comes once a year. The production cycle begins at the end of April and finishes around the end of November. We spend eight or nine months entirely with the fields, the rice, and our farming tools. Even after the farming season, we still stay in the fields to raise buffaloes and cattle. The rice fields are our life, our way of living, our spirit, our understanding of the world, our everyday life.
In truth, farmers like my mother, my family, and countless others are highly skilled experts. My mother has farmed since childhood and still works at age seventy. She farms seventeen rai (about 6.7 acres) mostly by herself, sometimes hiring help and sometimes not because there isn’t enough money and labor is hard to find—everyone is busy with their own fields. Farmers like my mother are hardworking and never give up on their profession. Yet adaptation is incredibly difficult because everything depends on external factors: the seasons, government policies, limited access to production technologies, capital, water sources, and irrigation. We can only entrust our lives and hopes to the seasons and the uncertainty of crop prices.
“Using fertilizer and chemicals” becomes almost the only guarantee that all our investment and labor will amount to something—that the rice will grow beautifully and uniformly, without disease, fungus, or pests destroying the crop. People often ask repeatedly, “Why use chemicals and fertilizers?” Farmers repeatedly answer, “To make the rice grow well and stay disease-free.” If the rice doesn’t thrive or gets sick, it means collapse without any security. That’s why organic farming is a path many farmers cannot risk taking.
My mother begins the farming season after Songkran with an important ritual. The very first step is paying respect to Ta Haek and Yai Haek, ancestral guardian spirits. On the auspicious morning for entering the fields, she prepares sticky rice, food, tobacco, and white liquor in a banana-leaf offering and places it beneath a large tree at the edge of the field. She tells me:
“Our ancestors, including our grandparents, are here. They never left. They bless us with abundant rice, no pests, no drought, and good prices.”
“Building the paddy embankments” is critically important. Before the rains arrive, we must ensure the embankments are high and strong enough to hold water for the next four or five months. Every drop of rain is quickly absorbed into our sandy soil. Therefore, we must make the embankments as high as possible and constantly hope that enough rain will come to fill them. But if too much rain falls and the embankment breaks, it becomes a matter of life and death. We must rebuild it immediately.
“Plowing the fields” means turning over the soil and killing weeds in preparation for planting and transplanting rice seedlings. It takes nearly two months to finish. Traditionally, we used buffaloes to plow, so everything happened slowly and carefully. Beyond understanding the spiritual dimension of farming, we recognized the gratitude we owed our buffaloes and cattle, who helped us farm and reduced our need for chemical fertilizers. Because of this, I carry memories of riding buffaloes, swimming with them, caring for them, and sometimes being teased by them. Of course, a mischievous child like me always got even.
Speaking of buffaloes, in the Isan dialect, buffalo is pronounced “khuay.” In mainstream Thai society, however, this word is often considered a vulgar insult. I want to call for an end to the humiliation of “khuay” (buffaloes), because when farmers and Isan people talk about buffaloes, we are not insulting anyone. The word itself is not inherently vulgar.
“The love and bond between farmers and their buffaloes and cattle” is reflected in my mother, who took wonderful care of hers. When the grazing season ended and grasslands became rice fields, my mother and I had to wake up early to cut fresh grass for them. She would never feed them old grass because, she said, it didn’t taste good. Besides fresh grass, she fed them rice bran until they grew fat and healthy. And when the time came to sell them, all I could do was cry. I remember my mother gently stroking her buffaloes and cattle and whispering into their ears. I never heard what she said, but I knew they were both in pain beyond words. Even writing about it now makes me cry.
“Dry transplanting” was another pain I can barely describe. I remember doing it only once or twice as a child. It meant plowing fields without a single drop of water and planting withered seedlings that survived only because of their resilience into dry soil after the rains failed. Farmers’ ability to cope with this varies. Those with lowland fields near water are more fortunate, but they still need money for fuel and pumps to irrigate their fields. And even then, after transplanting, they still have to hope rain will come.
I remember my mother carrying buckets of water to pour over the rice plants. She would speak to them:
“Please survive.”
I saw one woman’s hope invested in those rice plants—her physical strength, her heart, and her spirit amid hopelessness and isolation, abandoned even by the seasons.
“Pulling weeds, spreading fertilizer, checking the embankments, watching for worms and insects, cutting grass for cattle and buffaloes” all happened alongside catching crabs and fish. Farmers went to the fields every day after transplanting. Finishing the planting never meant the work was over.
“Harvesting rice” was a celebration for my mother, especially when the rice panicles were heavy. It meant greater yields. I, however, looked miserable because my little hands couldn’t bear the weight of the rice. My mother had to find ways to entertain me. I remember her teaching me how to make a flute from rice stalks. I would blow the flute while harvesting. It was delightful. We harvested rice and left it to dry before bundling it and piling it together on the threshing ground.
“Threshing rice” was something I did the least because I was too young. Even though my memories of participating are faint, I vividly remember lying down and waiting while my parents threshed rice, watching the stars, roasting sticky rice in bamboo, and warming ourselves by the fire. The moonlit nights and sparkling stars remain crystal clear in my mind. My mother taught me to read the stars and tell time by them. I loved threshing season because I saw my mother happy. She sang as she worked—something I almost never heard her do at any other time.
“The rice barn” reflected a family’s harvest. The larger the barn, the more rice they had and the better off they were. Ours was medium-sized. We hired ox carts to transport rice from the fields to our barn. I don’t remember the cost, but I loved riding in the cart. The last time we hired carts, it took around fifteen cartloads. At the time, I didn’t know whether that was a lot or a little, but families with nearly a hundred rai of land certainly filled more than a hundred carts.
“Rice prices, which farmers cannot control and which are governed by market mechanisms constantly influenced by politics, haunt farmers like my mother like ghosts.” The true costs include the expertise accumulated over a lifetime, a year’s worth of labor spent in the fields, the price of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, cart rentals, and the labor of cattle and buffaloes that help us farm.
These costs disappear from calculations under an unfair market system and under governments that have failed in every era to create justice for the profession practiced by so many people across the Northeast, North, West, Central Plains, and parts of the South.
From my perspective as a farmer, the true price of rice must include:
Therefore, the fair price of rice should be no less than 100 baht per kilogram. That is the price that would allow this profession to survive and maintain its place in society. I calculate this based on reality because I am a farmer. I do this work, and I calculated it with my own hands.
This reflects a painful truth: every grain of rice we eat so deliciously in this country comes from the blood and flesh of farmers. When unhusked rice sells for only 5 to 16 baht per kilogram—many times below production costs—it means farmers produce rice at a loss so that everyone else can eat cheaply and wages can remain low. The profits generated by this exploitation—whose pockets do they end up in?
At this point, don’t ask why farmers want rice price guarantees; why farmers are in debt; why farmers’ children no longer want to farm; why farmers sell the land they love; or why mothers tell their children to become officials or professionals instead.
Because justice for those who do this work has never truly existed in this country’s history.
