The project is promoting organic fruit farming and exporting in my area. The idea came about because of a villager named Peera. Peera's brother met me at a village meeting a few weeks ago and requested help exporting fruit. I visited his house, met Peera, and a few days later got a long tour of his model organic farm. It's a really cool place. Some highlights are:
-He makes organic fertilizer out of manure and material from palm trees.
-The farm feeds a lot of frogs. At night, the frogs are let loose in an enclosed space in the field to eat bugs, which are attracted to the area by purple lights. This helps control the bugs without chemicals. He also breeds the frogs and sells them when they are big enough.
-To also help control the bug situation without chemicals, he has a tree that grows a certain type of fruit that birds like, and the birds eat the bugs too.
-He plants a lot of bamboo on the farm, for multiple uses. He plants it around the perimeter to block chemicals from neighboring farms, because it grows very tall very quickly. He plants it in areas of unwanted grass/weeds so that it will grow and block the sunlight, killing the grass without chemicals. He also sells the bamboo once fully grown.
-He plants a lot of "ya-fek" grass, which helps draw minerals and water into the soil. The grass is distributed for free at every province because of its good environmental impact.
-He has a bee house that feeds a small, non-stinging type of bee which pollinates the flowers on the fruit trees.
Peera claims that this farm is unique to the entire province of Surat Thani. He has a background education in organic farming, and is passionate about promoting it in the community. Besides the environmental benefits, growing fruit organically means you can potentially export it at more than double the local prices. Peera already exports, but he is looking to expand.
This is a potentially big project because Peera already has a successful organic farm of his own, and he is willing to share his knowledge with the community. He claims that the SAO is not willing to help him, that it is more interested in building roads than helping farmers - but when I presented this to the top people in the office, they were on board from the start. They are willing to use budget money to support it, and have set up a meeting to tour the farm with a local professor who has a background in agriculture. Now I'm just hoping to get outside support from an NGO, and also connect with some other contacts the Peace Corps gave me who have experience in organic farming and exporting. We'll see where it goes from here...
Speaking of fruit, another equally important project in the community was helping to decorate a car with fruit to be entered into a competition. We came in 5th out of 30... pretty decent showing for sure. Maybe a waste of fruit, but well worth it for the sake of the art and fine craftsmanship that went into it.
The following is the car that won...
