Promoting Sufficient Economy for Ban Chian, Chainat District

For Thai people, rice is much more than just food; it is rather a part of Thai culture, as rice is an integral part of traditions, beliefs, religions, rituals, celebrations, wisdom, and a way of life. Rice is an important economic crop, most of the country's agricultural areas being rice paddies. Thai farmers grow rice as their main crop for their own consumption and rice seed for domestic sales and international export. Thailand has become a major world exporter of rice and famous for Thai Jasmine Rice with its unique flavor and aroma.

I can't help wondering why Thai farmers are still deprived of money and need to take out loans to support themselves and their families. I went to Japan, where rice is also the main staple diet. They can sell their rice at a premium, allowing Japanese farmers to support themselves and be known as happy farmers. I would like to know how they achieve that?

This motivated me to conduct my experience-based research, the Participatory Research for the Sustainable Utilization of rice: A Case in Thailand, which shows how collaboration, encourages everyone in the communities to share the same goals and work more effectively together. It also helps improve productivity and opens new ways of thinking as a new business model. (Turkish Online Journal of Qualitative Inquiry, Bol.12, Issue7, July 2021: 10787-10807).

Recommendations have been introduced to farmers to be more self-reliant through an integrated management of their land while living harmoniously with society and its nature.

Introduce farmers to growing alternative crops and other agriculture activities besides solely rice.
Advise farmers on how to be self-sustainable in farming rather than to be dependent on weather: even climate/environment difficulties, there’s still food available to be produced in the community.
Promote farmers to transform by-products from rice farming - husks, rice bran, straw etc. - into derivative products to increase generated revenue for households.
Establish a community enterprise to create bargaining power for farmers and reach consumers directly.

1. Growing Alternative Crops and Other Agriculture Activities

Uncle Sit and Aunt Aim, who never stop doing something, are an example of farmers who rarely have to buy food. They can walk into the backyard and pick vegetables from the garden to cook. Many vegetables may be purchased and some left to grow; others sown and picked after a time, such as lemongrass, galangal, basil, chilli, white eggplant, chinese cabbage, morning glory, papaya, long beans, and lemons grown in a cement pond. Those can all be picked every morning and sold to the shop in the village or shared with the neighbours. If many houses grow vegetables and raise ducks and chickens for eggs to eat and sell like this, it will create a self-sufficient economy by sharing and helping each other. This allows the people in the community to be self-reliant. Without rain, water or germination, they can survive by self-growing vegetables and sharing food in the village.

2. Feeding Fish to Increase Year-Round Food Supplies

Rice-fish farming is an excellent example of a sustainable approach to increasing food supplies as it does not involve any artificial fertiliser or pesticide. Also, it does not require expensive equipment or external expertise. It is also not harmful to the environment. Integrated rice-fish approaches at farm and land-scape level can improve resilience to climate change and a sustainable and healthy food system.

In parallel with growing rice, Uncle Nim and family are also starting their own fish cultivation farms, creating a rice-fish system. Benefits include:

- less chemical used as fish act as biological control of rice pests and weed, which reduce the need for pesticides

- the multi-purpose use of land can optimize its use in various seasons

- fish can help flip over soil when they swim around, which indirectly aids in increasing crop yield from overturning nutrients

- additional income stream for farmers from selling fish

3. Set up Community Mills to be Self-Reliant from Middleman

A farmer’s union for the rice milling community was successfully set up, which proved to be a significant step towards gaining independence from middlemen and helping improve the farmers’ quality of life. From then on, they have been able to earn more income through directly reaching consumers, upvaluing the rice produced, and improving product packaging. To further stimulate the community, I initiated the idea of transforming by-products of rice into value-added goods by create inhouse brand called “Ban Chian.”

I encourage farmers to undertake the rice milling process themselves as opposed to rely on milling factories. Through supporting and promoting rice farmers in Chainat to grow and mill their own rice. I have allowed them to become independent of third-party millers and middlemen. I also have helped them design rice package to be sold in Bangkok as a means of increasing the income stream of farmers.

4. Rice Derivative to Create Year-Round Revenues

I advised farmers on how to be self-sustainable in farming rather than to be dependent on weather. Even with difficulties from the climate, environment and others, there is still food available in the community.

Embracing this concept, the farming community went further in using the byproducts to produce duck egg, salty duck egg, heating pads, rice straw paper, stationaries, and more that have helped generate an additional stream of income for their families.

Salty Egg - Rice derivative from rice bran

Farmers no longer have to buy duck feed from milling factories as they can use their own by-product of rice bran to feed ducks. Rice bran is a mixture of protein, fat, ash, and crude fiber. This reduces the farmer’s costs of living as well as enables them to access yet another income stream through selling duck eggs.

I therefore suggested adding salted eggs to Ban Chian duck egg products. We have the famous and popular Chaiya salted egg recipe with its delicious taste and shiny yolk, unlike salted eggs elsewhere. The secret comes from conventional wisdom, using molehill soil that adheres to the eggshell well, creating a unique taste. If using ordinary soil that does not adhere to the eggshell well, the salted eggs will not have a consistent taste.

The salted egg recipe that we tried, and has a satisfying taste is as follows:

1. Mix 3 parts of anthill soil with 1 part of salt and bring the water to the boil. Mix together. The water must be clean and filtered, while the anthill soil must be exposed to the sun to be sterilised.

2. Remove the washed and dried duck eggs. Dip and mix with the soil mixture in step 1.

3. Mix eggs that are already mixed with the soil mixture with burnt rice husk to prevent water evaporation and stop the eggs from sticking together. Rice husk ash contains calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and silica, which allows good salinity.

4. Keep eggs in a jar or a closed container that has low ventilation.

Consuming salted eggs can be done in various ways based on the age of salted eggs, such as leaving in the mixture for 3 days, 7 days for boiling for sweet eggs, 15 days for fried eggs, 15-20 days for boiled eggs or after 20 days for dessert filling or spicy salad. For salinity to be consistent, wash the soil from the eggs thoroughly, then store in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.

Biomass Energy - Rice derivative from rice husk

Rice husk is one of the major by-products from the rice milling process. It is an agricultural waste that the mills themselves often encounter problems with storing or disposal. With storage costs and lack of storage space, it is often put in mountainous piles outside the mill area, resulting in small dust particles from the rice husk scattering and blowing away in the wind.

I have advised farmers to transform left over rice husks into charcoal to increase revenues for households. This allows them to be used to generate renewable fuel, heat or bioprocesses. It not only contributes nutrients but also absorbs odours and keeps the root system clean and hygienic.

The burning process starts by starting a fire around the rice husk to ignite the flame by mixing it with straw, wood, and other debris, letting the rice husk gradually burn until completely black. Then use a paddle to remove the black rice husk ash and dry them thoroughly before putting them in a machine for charcoal bars with a thickness of approximately 1 inch per piece and dry them in the sun before packing.

This rice husk charcoal contains minerals, silica, potassium, and phosphate to help improve soil conditions and discourage disease in the soil. A rice husk is very porous and a good habitat for microorganisms, causing many degradation processes when mixing with soil, especially clay. It makes clay soil looser and easy to till while reducing the soil's acidity and increasing the soil temperature. There are no pathogens, and it plays a role in reducing global warming! Since rice husk charcoal is a carbon, resistant to microbial degradation and difficult to remove from the soil, it accumulates in the ground and adds carbon to the soil instead of being burnt, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of the culprits of global warming

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Rice Straw Paper – Rice derivative from rice straw

Rice straw contributes to most of the waste from harvesting season and are usually burnt away by farmers, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which causes pollution problems, especially smog or PM 2.5 that exceeds the standard level, one of the national problems that cannot be resolved at the moment.

What if we could use rice straw for further benefits and additional income after harvesting? I discovered a way to make paper from rice straw with a similar process to making mulberry paper and tried to do that myself.

The process of making rice straw paper starts with cutting the stalks from the rice straw, leaving only 3-5 inches of sticky strips, soaking the rice straw in water with 150 grams of caustic soda

and rice husk ash to soften the rice straw. Note: Gloves are required because caustic soda can burn the skin, and we need to pour caustic soda into the water, not the water into caustic soda, as this can cause an explosion! After 1 night of soaking, wash and boil the rice straw in the ashes until soggy, approximately 2-3 hours, then grind it with a blender. We then mould into paper in a wooden frame. At this stage, we can add flower petals to add patterns to the rice straw paper; then, it must be dried in the sun for approximately 3 hours before slowly peeling the paper from the frame. You will get rice straw paper that can be used as wrapping paper for various crafts

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We had fun experimenting, making paper from rice straw because we found more and more things to do with it. We can transform rice straw into trays and paper gift bags, while the rectangular wooden frame does not need to be filled with finely ground rice straw, but circle drops to make a saucer tray or coaster decorated with leaves, flowers, and other endless creativities.

Papyrus Mat – from natural grown papyrus grass along rice field

Even though this is not the season of rice planting, farmers spend their free time by using Thai local wisdom to do handmade mat weaving using Papyrus plant. Papyrus plant is considered sacred in Egyptian culture, in Thailand papyrus mat becomes a part of lifestyle of people in the past to present. We can see it almost everywhere including in spa, restaurants, picnic place, and bedroom. Moreover, it is all natural and safe for using in all activities.

Aunt Aim's mother, we call her Grandma, is 86 years old and still healthy. She collects reed leaves at the pond in front of the house and then dries them in the sun. She then sharpens them into strips and weaves them in a weaving machine to make reed mats. The mats can be big or medium-sized, enough to sleep alone for personal use and sell as extra income. Grandma's reed mats smell of nature and are very comfortable to lay on.

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Tie Dye fabrics – from rice paddy mud

Mud from rice fields can be used as a mordant or dye fixative in the dyeing process. This is because mud helps attach dyes onto fabrics and darkens their colors. I wanted to experiment with two dyeing scarves into darker colors using two natural plants. The first plant is called the Burma Padauk (red-brown color) or Pradoo in Thai. The second plant is called the Caesalpenia Sappan (red-orange color) or Fang in Thai. When these two plant dyes bind to mud from rice fields, they become purple and light brown in color respectively.

The results from this experimentation was very exciting! It was awesome to learn that dyes can be another by-product of rice fields.

Rice heating pad – rice leftover from rice milling and homegrown herbs

I have initiated “Ban Chian Rice Heating Pad” with passion a passion for developing sustainable farming ideas. The project is aimed at supporting villagers in Ban Chian community and helping them become self-reliant on sustainable farming. It also teaches farmers the basic ways of life where they can earn income for a living just be utilizing natural resources surrounding them.

Rice left over from rice milling is used to make the Rice Herbal Pad. This homemade pad helps release tension and relaxed stiff joints.

These 4 homegrown herbs ingredients were stuffed in the herbal pad.

- Lemon grass helps clear nasal congestion and relieve migraine. It is believed that a compound in lemongrass called “Eugenal” has similar abilities to aspirin.

- Cassumunar ginger is Thai traditional plant that can relieve muscular pain, cramp and joint pains.

- Sea salt helps stimulate circulation in body. It is also the great source of mineral.

- Rice that we used is from the left over grain from the milling process. It is best for heat retention.

In summary sufficient economy concept leads the rice milling, packaging, and selling of by-products, such as rice husk, bran and rice straw for multiple community use. However, turning agricultural waste products into things to be sold is not something farmers can easily do. It is not too difficult, and farmers are motivated by the long-term benefits, such as the compensation, environmental impact, health and learning about the production and distribution through trial and error through their own actions.