Can you spot the wannabe farmer?It's impossible to romanticize farm life of villagers because risks and pressures constantly outweigh rewards. Higher commodity prices will help some, but other problems, such as debts to suppliers of seeds and fertilizers and to loan sharks, remain a big threat to financial security and land ownership. The going rate for borrowing "outside the system" is around 3% to 5% per month and the ever present risk is loss of land that's been put up as loan collateral. A villager once showed me a "loan agreement" which consists of a signed agreement to sell her land to the loan shark, with all the other blank spaces left unfilled, including the price.
In this picture, you see a rare and happy exception. The gentleman wearing a yellow shirt (in honor of His Majesty the King) is the family's patriarch who recently retired from farming due to age and illness. Through life-long hard work and frugality, he and his wife had managed to own their land without any debts whatsoever. When retirement time came along, they decided to sell the land and give money to their five daughters, one of whom came from Bangkok to get her share of the proceeds wearing thick makeup and an alarming miniskirt. I am not complaining.
I will always remember seeing grandma smiling joyfuly as she handed out stacks of cash to each of her children. For themselves, the landowners dismantled an old wooden house they had lived in for about four decades and took the wood to build another house to live in on a daughter's property.
In the picture, from left to right: Grandaughter (mother of little girl), grandpa, daughter with her grandaughter, son-in-law, and me. Incidentally, the little girl (Nong Yu) is the top student in her class. I'll do what I can to help her stay in school.
Photo location: Baan Hintoom, Uthaithani province
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