The story goes into some detail here, but if you care at all about the quality of food that you buy or about the way farmers are treated, we suggest you read on.
Much of the instructional training for farmers in Thailand focuses on chemicals-based monoculture – the idea of concentrating on a single crop, with paid-for inputs of pesticide and fertilizer.
But Kwan was committed to the ideas of Mollison and Holmgren on what they called permaculture, the idea of building a self-contained mini-ecosystem, using natural and sustainable sources of energy and arranging simultaneous crops so that they complement each other.
Kwan has implemented this by, for example, interspersing his mangosteen trees with stinky bean, a tree that returns nitrogen to the soil, and shading his vegetables with his banana plants to protect them from direct sunlight. He is preparing to replace half of his mangosteen trees with a different crop.
Before the switch to organic farming three years ago, the family mangosteen farm was using about 1.4 tons of chemical fertilizer each year. After the switch, Kwan is using mostly fermented plant juice as fertilizer, topping this up with the occasional purchase of manure.
This is significant because of what Kwan refers to as “the invisible man”. The “invisible” agricultural traders, who drive those loaded-down trucks you see on Thai roads, intermediate between farmers and big retailers and squeeze the farmers very aggressively on price.
Monoculture farmers face these traders from a very weak negotiating position, having just one crop to live off and ultimately having no choice but to sell to pay for their chemical inputs.
“The farmer works for a whole year, but the trader works for just one day and takes all the profit,” said Kwan.
Kwan is aiming to achieve complete self-sufficiency at the farm, something he hopes farmers in general can also achieve. Only when farmers have no immediate pressure to sell will they be able to negotiate on equal terms with the traders, he said.