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.
And what is also interesting about these traders is that they grade produce on the basis of its appearance. With mangosteens, what this means is that they tend to pay less for organically-farmed fruit than for the chemical variety, because the organic fruit has external imperfections.
In his first year at the farm, Kwan used up all of his savings and made a profit on paper of just 30,000 baht, but by his second year he had discovered the Bangkok Farmers’ Market.
This changed everything. It gave him the opportunity to sell directly to discerning customers, and enabled him to deliver his fruit to these customers in the best possible condition.
Fruit farms that sell their produce to traders generally pick their fruit before it is ripe, so it can ripen for several weeks in transit. Kwan, on the other hand, now picks his fruit only when it is ripe and delivers it straight to the Farmers’ Market.
This has given his business more security and has also altered its incentive structure. Now, he gets rewarded for farming organically, for protecting the environment, and for the quality of his mangosteens.
And the rewards keep coming. Kwan has just got married to Sirithorn Hongloi, a Bangkok city girl who shares his vision, and they have set aside a piece of land to build their dream house. The house too will adhere to the principles of permaculture, making optimum use of natural materials and natural sources of energy - sunlight, shade and breeze.
As for the quality of their mangosteens, you just have to try them. As the birds sang, the mosquitoes started to bite, and the Farmers’ Market quadrocopter buzzed about above our heads like an insistent bee, we tried the mangosteens straight from the tree. The memory of them lingers even now, like a giant strawberry explosion.
Left: Watcharapol Daengsubha (Kwan) and Sirithorn Hongloi at the Farmers' Market.
Right: Volunteers at Bangkok Permaculture come to learn about organic farming.
Bottom right: Kwan plants legumes under his fruit trees to naturally return nitrogen to the soil.