ლლლლლლლ ლლლლლლ
ლლლლლლლბბბ
ლლლლბბბბ ლლბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბბ ლლბბბბ ლბბბბბბ
Why do we need to save seeds?
And there's a lot of seeds in the market now.
Why do we need to worry about food when there's a lot of food in the market now?
So many people keep asking me about that.
Why do you have to save seeds?
But actually there are a lot of food in the market.
There are a lot of seeds in the market.
But there's something behind the seeds.
Most of people don't think about it.
Most of people don't know about it.
Because we were disconnected from farmers and consumers.
We don't know what do they grow.
We just eat whatever looks nice.
And the farmers, they don't think about they grow for somebody to eat.
They just think about that. They grow for sale.
That's all.
When these two groups don't know each other, there's something happen in the middle.
I grew up as a farmer.
So I see something happen in my farmer's life.
The first thing that I see is when I was kid,
my family or people in my village used to grow more than 5 varieties of rice every year.
So I used to ask my mother why we need to grow 5 varieties of rice.
And at the end we just mix everything together to eat.
My mother said we have to save varieties of rice.
Because different kind of rice, they have different quality, different character.
Some kind of rice they survive in dry season.
When it's no rain for many months they can survive.
Some kind of rice they survive in flooding.
When they have a big flood, they can extend itself for one meter in one or two nights.
Some varieties they can survive.
Even they have disease, they have some epidemic.
So when they grow more than 5 varieties of rice, whatever happen,
they still have food, have rice to eat.
That mean security of life.
But now people grow only one or two varieties for sale.
So whatever happen, they lost.
They don't have anything.
That mean life have no security.
When I was kid, nobody sell seed.
Seed is something you can give to people.
You can share with people, you can trade with people with something else.
But when I was about 12 or 13 years old,
there's a company came and they start to give hybrid seed, hybrid watermelon seed to people in my village.
Because people in my village used to grow watermelon for many years.
And then they are very famous about that.
When the company came, they gave hybrid seed along with chemical fertilizer.
So when people start to grow hybrid seed,
they love it because they grow very fast and have a lot of fruit.
And then all the fruit look the same size and then taste good.
Next year, villagers want to grow their seed again, but they need to buy it.
And then after three years, they grow hybrid seed.
The local watermelon seed disappeared.
So after that, everybody need to buy seed.
You have no choice because there's no local seed left in that area and in many places around it.
And the price of seed rising up very fast.
In the beginning, it's only maybe less than 100 baht per kilo.
But after four, five years later, the price goes up to 1000 baht per kilo.
And at the end now, the price of watermelon seed goes up to 12000 baht per kilo.
So it's not happened with watermelon seed only.
It happened with all kinds of vegetable, all kinds of seed that we grow for eating.
So that thing I feel like it's not normal.
Why we need to buy seed so expensive like that?
Why the seed have to be very expensive like that?
So the price of watermelon seed in the village now is about 10,000 baht per kilo or $300 per kilo.
The farmer in the village, they have average income about 30,000 baht or $900 per year.
So if one farmer who want to grow watermelon about 9 acres, they need to invest at least 100,000 baht.
So when they start to think about it, they need to think about where to get money.
That's the beginning of debt in farmer's life.
Because now 60% of money that farmers invest will go to the company.
So if one family who want to grow 9 acres of watermelon,
so they need to be in debt for sure because they have 30,000 baht or $900 per year.
But they need 100,000 to invest. That means they need to be in debt.
So this is the big problem in everywhere.
We can see it quite clear that the seed business and the chemical business involved with debt of villages clearly now everywhere.
So now the whole village, people become in debt 100% now.
And most of them, they don't know how to pay of debt in their life.
What happened now in everywhere, in Thailand or maybe in another countries,
all the farmers turned to be slaves in their land.
They used debt as a chain to tie all the farmers very tight, forced them to work very hard.
Farmers need to get up early and work until dark every day.
Just work to make money and send money to the company.
And then they don't have anything to eat.
Farmers who grow food but have no food to eat.
Farmers who work hard but have very bad life.
How can that happen?
So seed was used as a tool to trap farmers into debt system and turn farmers into slaves.
And then nowhere they can get out of this system.
Now everybody turns to slaves completely, evenly.
So that's the most scary part of it.
Because now they work harder than normal slaves.
Nobody work 8 hours per day in the past.
Even slaves, they never work 8 hours per day.
Slaves, they work in season.
They have only season to work, 2 season to work, planting season and harvest season and the rest is rest time.
But now we work all year long, work for nothing.
So our life is worse than any life in the history.
That make me feel like it's wrong.
Why we need to develop our life in this way?
So seed of food is a tool to turn people into slaves.
If we don't think clearly, if we don't have seed, we have no freedom.
If we don't save seed, we cannot be happy.
Our ancestors select the best for us.
What kind of plant that they grow well last long give a lot of fruit and taste good.
They save those things and then it turn to the life heritage for all of us now.
Now we have a lot of food to enjoy.
That's the benefit of our ancestors that gave it to us.
But now we don't save seed.
We let a few companies save seed for us.
But they did not select seed as our ancestors used to do it before.
They select the worst one and then they develop our seed to make them weaker.
They cannot stay long, they cannot rely on themselves.
They need to rely on chemical and food from the factory.
So the taste is bad.
We don't have a good quality of food anymore.
So what happen now is we have no heritage to give to our next generation anymore.
So this food can be the last food, the last meal for our ancestors, our era.
Because we ruin everything, we ruin our food.
That means we ruin our life, we ruin our next generation.
We have nothing.
That's why I feel like we need to save seed now.
Because seed is life, seed is our next generation.
Seed is freedom, seed is happiness.
If you have no seed, you have nothing.
You are the good slave.
Good slave of a few companies and then that's the end.
What we can do now is we come back to the farm.
We come back to this place we call Phan Phan.
We started seven years ago.
So we start to grow our own food here.
We start to save seed, collect seed from all over the place and grow them here.
And then we can enjoy our life.
We save seed and networking with another group.
And then try to share seed together.
We try to keep the seed alive.
We don't want the seed to end it now.
Which is work well.
And then more and more people interested about seed.
We can give seed to people a lot every year.
We give free seed.
When they sell seed, very expensive.
We give it for free.
We always give seed.
Food is life. We cannot sell life.
We try to give life to people.
And now we feel like we start a small heaven here.
We start to work on it.
We want to turn it into a heaven.
Heaven means we have a lot of food.
We have a lot of people who come to live together
and enjoy living together.
And we hope that one day we will have enough seed, enough food for our next generation.
And now we see that that thing is not too far away from us.
We can do it.
We hope that one day we will have enough seed, enough food for our next generation.
We hope that one day we will have enough seed, enough food for our next generation.
We hope that one day we will have enough seed, enough food for our next generation.
We hope that one day we will have enough seed, enough food for our next generation.
We hope that one day we will have enough seed.
