Kittiwat Wasuratdechapong looks back at his chemically treated orange orchards, which left him in financial ruin, with despair.
Oranges grown organically may not have polished peel or look appealing. But they are safe to consume both as a fruit and as juice. (Photos by Penchan Charoensuthipan)
He vowed to never repeat the mistake that he kept repeating over and over again -- that is, relying on chemicals to improve his yields.
Mr Kittiwat was born into a family of bang mod orange growers in Pathum Thani. For a long time, the sweet native orange was a household name in Thailand.
To keep up with demand, growers sprayed their orchards with gallons of chemicals to ward off pests. They didn't know that they had created a ticking time bomb -- a disaster waiting to happen.
It took many disasters before farmers like Mr Kittiwat embraced organic farming methods and parted ways with man-made chemicals. But it wasn't just up to the farmers to change the way they grow our food -- consumers also play an important role in sustaining harmful practices.
In 1977, seawater intrusion drove Mr Kittiwat and other farmers to abandon their orchards. Many moved away to set up new orchards in Nong Sua, Lam Luk Ka, and Thanya Buri in Pathum Thani, where land prices were cheap and water supplies were abundant.
Their old orchards might be gone, but their old habits certainly were not. They brought along with them sackfuls of pesticides and fertilisers, which they quickly dumped over their land. The outcome wasn't hard to predict. Soon after, the soil turned acidic while the pests -- instead of dying -- became immune to the pesticides and spread like the plague.
Organic vegetables and fruits are picked, packaged and sold to ‘green’ supermarkets and outlets and also directly to consumers.
Unable to fight the deteriorating conditions, Mr Kittiwat's family once again packed up and headed north to Kamphaeng Phet, where they had just purchased a new orchard. Again, they treated the land with chemicals, and unsurprisingly, the same problems returned.
"It was deja vu, really. We wound up under a lot of debt -- we owed more than three million baht, I think," he said.
"We had to sell off everything we owned to pay off our debts."
Just when Mr Kittiwat thought he had hit rock bottom, he found out about and joined the Agriculture Development and Rehabilitation Fund, because he wanted to learn how to restructure his debts.
The fund required him to attend a debt-elimination programme, through which he discovered organic farming methods. Mr Kittiwat then acquired eight rai of land, on which he grew oranges, guavas and other fruits -- all using organic methods.
"It felt like the light had suddenly shined on my life," he said.
Mr Kittiwat makes his own fertilisers -- a mixture of cow manure and hay, which he carefully shovels around the base of his trees. Nong sua orange trees grown with his organic fertiliser mix yield exceptionally tasty fruit, he said.
At present, Mr Kittiwat sells his produces at Lemon Farm and Tops supermarkets, tapping into their network of consumers and selling directly to them, with the hope of eventually bypassing the middlemen completely.
In order to do this, Mr Kittiwat needs to be in tune with consumers' demands.
"Older buyers prefer [oranges with] rougher skin but sweet flesh, while younger consumers tend to buy large ones with shiny peel -- they couldn't care less if the fruits are laced with chemicals or not," Mr Kittiwat said.
"The main point is not how the fruits feel to the touch or how they look on the outside. When they are organically grown, the fruits will be safe for both the producer and consumer -- no matter what they look like."
To further expand his customer base, Mr Kittiwat processes his raw produce into ingredients for making soaps and shampoos. He also opens his orchard to visitors, where for a small fee, they can pick fruits right off the trees while enjoying freshly squeezed orange juice, which Mr Kittiwat sells by the bottle.
All of these were made possible after organic farmers around his area decided to come together to establish Nong Wang community enterprise, where farmers can join together to exchange their knowledge and market their produce to other consumers.
Farmer Sunthorn Khomkai, called organic farmers "defenders of food security".
The member of the Khao Mai Kaew organic produce network in Prachin Buri said that living off vegetables and fruits grown without chemicals allows farmers to live healthier and longer.
"Organic farming ensures the sustainability of our food supplies. It hurts no one," he said.
Mr Sunthorn also has a story to tell about how he came to part ways with chemical fertilisers. After graduating from university, he worked as a salesman for a chemical pesticide and fertiliser company. Business was brisk and not long after, he managed to open his own agricultural chemical supplies shop -- all the while tending a fruit orchard on the side.
"I was one of those people who heaped chemicals on the soil so the trees would bear fruit all year long, allowing me to profit even during off-seasons," he said.
One day, while taking part in a protest against a power plant project in 2012, Mr Sunthorn met several organic farmers from Chachoengsao's Sanam Chai Khet district, who introduced him to the benefits of organic farming methods.
"These days, consumers and farmers are being backed into a corner. Big businesses point the direction for us to follow. We eat and live at their mercy," he said.
"We follow even when we don't want to. It's because we think we have no choice. We eat our food knowing full well how tainted with chemicals they are."
According to Mr Sunthorn, locally grown, organic fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as the ones found in nature are key to a healthy life.
"Seasonal crops, when grown with proper methods, don't need to be sprayed with pesticides," he said.
Grown properly, continued Mr Sunthorn, these plants could be an inexpensive way to provide a lot of food.
"Phak khut, or vegetable fern -- whose fronds we often use as a garnish for nam prik -- can be grown without chemicals in shallow waters near swampy land with plenty of shade from the tree canopy," he said.
Mr Sunthorn said that the farmers' survival depends on fairer trading conditions. According to him, farmers need price guarantees to ensure a stable stream of income.
"Retail prices of organic produce must also be kept in a reasonable range, so more consumers can afford them," he said.
"Charging too much will only hurt a crop's competitiveness in the market."
The Khao Mai Kaew organic produce network has a large pool of members, with some 500 who own a combined land area of 10,000 rai across Prachin Buri -- all of which are used to growing organic vegetables and fruits.
"Members are constantly experimenting with new tools and methods which they developed in response to a specific demand within the organic farming community," said Mr Sunthorn.
As of now, the network's members still count local community markets as their prime outlet for selling their produces. At these markets, producers take pride in the literal fruits of their labour.
"Consumers have the right to know what they are buying -- they should know where their fruits and/or vegetables come from, what seed stock they came from, how they were grown, and even how they were harvested," said Mr Sunthorn.
While Mr Sunthorn believes that the days of chemical pesticides and fertilisers are numbered, organic produce still has a lot of catching up to do, as they account for less than 1% of all fresh produce sold in Thailand.
"Farmers and consumers have to create a unique supply chain through which organic produce is marketed and sold," he said.
The main hurdle now, said Mr Sunthorn, is making sure that people understand what an "organic" label actually means.
"Hydroponic vegetables are not necessarily organic just because they are not grown in soil," he said.
To this end, Mr Sunthorn believes farmers must establish direct communication channels with their consumers to bridge the knowledge gap.
"Consumers must be given a chance to visit organic farms to see for themselves how labour-intensive the entire process is -- every weed has to be manually hand-plucked to eliminate the need for pesticides," he said.
Jakchai Chomthongdee, Oxfam Thailand's policy and campaigns manager, said in Thailand, farming is far from being a rewarding job. Farmers, he said, are not earning enough to enjoy an adequate standard of living and many are not reaping any benefits from the very food network they helped to build.
"For every 100 baht of produce sold in supermarkets, small-scale farmers and workers in the agricultural sector get less than 15 baht," according to Mr Jakchai.
"There are about 23 million farmers in the country. Everything they produce goes into the hands of food processing, retail and wholesale companies, which are owned by a select few people."
