Name: Sia Lee
Age: 25
Residence: Phon Van, Luang Prabang province
Family: Married, 1 baby daughter
Type and size of farming activity: 7 ha rice; 1 ha vegetables (morning glory, cabbage, lemon grass, chilies + some ‘western’ (he says!) vegetables such as beetroot, radish, zucchini; 13 water buffaloes (9 for meat, 4 for work)
Work force: A community of 7 families who own and work the fields together – additional help from villagers at harvest time (up to 50 people)
Why him: His farming community offers tours for tourists including explanations and hands-on demonstrations of all stages of rice growing. We attended a tour and Sia was our ‘guide’ (he speaks good English). The project is called The Living Land and I definitely recommend it to anybody visiting Luang Prabang, Laos.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what you are doing now for a living?
I was born in a village in the mountains near Luang Prabang, in a family of 14 children. We are part of the ‘Mnong’ so-called ‘hill tribe’. Like everybody else in the village, we were subsistence farmers. As a teenager I went to study IT in Luang Prabang; at the same time I was also working in a restaurant and helping out my parents on the farm – very hard! After I finished my studies, I realized that I couldn’t get a job in IT in Laos, so I went back to my parents’ who in the meantime had moved to the village where we currently live, very close to Luang Prabang. Until today we have been farming together, with 6 other families. We grow rice for our own consumption and vegetables, which we eat ourselves but also directly sell to hotels and restaurants in Luang Prabang. Additional revenue comes from our ‘Living Land farm’ project, which we started in 2011 with the help of westerners: We give tours on our farm and teach tourists about growing rice. This is getting more and more popular: during high season we give the tours daily.
You have just showed us the various stages of growing rice using only very traditional methods and no machines at all. Is this the way you grow rice for real? Can you briefly describe the various stages from sowing to cooking?
We now have one tractor for ploughing (and don’t plow with the buffalo anymore), but apart from that, this is the way we work on our farm. Note that we only have one ‘growing cycle’ lasting from June-July (when we plant) to October-November (when we harvest). In our case we grow 5 different varieties of sticky (=glutinous) rice, the main type of rice consumed in Laos, and one variety of non-sticky rice. We get an average yield of 4t/ha.
Here is a quick overview of the stages [also see photos below]: 1) We select the ‘good’ (= with big kernel inside) seeds from last year to be planted 2) We prepare the fields (ploughing, watering…) 3) We plant the seeds by hand in the ‘nursery area’, 4) After 3-4 weeks we replant them by hand in the big field. We use no chemicals; there is no need – as fertilizer we use buffalo pooh mixed with limestone, we get rid of the weeds by hand, and we don’t much problems with insects or fungi (and there are snails and fishes in the field to eat them). 5) After 4-5 months (depending on the variety) we dry the fields and harvest the rice by hand. 6) After harvest we let the rice dry for a few weeks. 7) We thrash the rice bundles on a wooden board in order to get the rice grains out. 8) We carry the cleaned rice grains home in baskets (drying and thrashing usually takes place next to the field). 9) This is how we conserve rice; It’s only before we need the rice for cooking that we separate the white kernel from the husk, first with a rice pounder and then simply by ‘turning’ the rice in the air to get rid of the lighter husks (this is typically the women’s job). There you go, the rice is ready for consumption! It’s called ‘brown’ rice because the grain is still covered by the next layer underneath the husk (since the husk has been removed manually).
What about the average Lao farmer – does he also grow rice in such a traditional way?
I would say that agriculture in Laos is slowly getting modernized and more mechanized. For example many farmers in the plains now use tractors to plow their fields, and some also use machines for planting and harvesting. Chemicals are also being increasingly used. However in the villages where everybody farms rice – in the hills for example – it is still very common to work as a community, planting and harvesting together, everything done by hand.
What is the farming activity you like best/least?
I love the time of harvest. There is a real sense of community because we are so many people working in the field together. There is also a real sense of achievement: our rice is ready, we now have our food for the next season! The activity I like the least is weeding – it needs to be done all the time, especially since we only grow rice in the rainy season! It’s painful work but we don’t want to use herbicides – they are too expensive; and we have rather small plots and enough workforce, this can be done by hand!
What’s your goal for the future
I want to live a happy life with my family and have enough rice to eat! Currently I’m happy with what and how we farm, as well as with our ‘Living Land’ project – no need to change or increase anything. But this could change in the future, we’ll see.
Some of the steps of growing rice in images (mouse-over the image to see the caption):
Farmers on my Road 