Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/659497
T H A I L A N D It had been 25 years since my first visit to Thailand. Way back then, I had just finished a semester of study in Kathmandu, Nepal, and had plans to spend a month in Southeast Asia backpacking through Thailand, Malaysia, and Sumatra. Due to a travel partner's unfortunate loss of his Swiss passport in a Bangkok taxi, we chose to spend the entire month in Thailand. Within that month, I found myself moving away from the southern beaches and the flood of tourists to the northern region of Chiang Mai. I immediately fell in love with the city and the region. The history, the food, and the culture all spoke to me then as much as they do now. This past December, I was fortunate enough to travel back to the neighboring northern region of Chiang Rai to meet with coffee producers and be hosted by the exporting group Beanspire and R. Miguel Meza of Isla Coffee. Chiang Rai borders Laos to the east and Myanmar to the west. It is a rugged mountainous region, known then as the Golden Triangle, with multiple tribal groups who have migrated from other conflict areas in Myanmar (then Burma), Laos, and China. Tribal groups such as the Akha, Karen, Hmong, Tao, and Lahu all reside in this remote area, Karen being the largest tribal group in the north. We were visiting groups in the Doi Pangkhon region as well as Mae Jan Tai areas, which were primarily Akha tribal coffee growers. My recollections from over 25 years ago show a very different Thailand than what I saw on this last trip. Opium (and the farming practices that accompany it) was a socio-environmental disaster. A militarized and addicted society began to stratify and disable the regions in the north due to the illicit trade. Most of the irradication has happened, and the extreme levels of opiate addiction have been tackled, but there are still environmental and social impacts after nearly 40 years. Though this was my first time to Chiang Rai, the two provinces clearly shared some of the same burdens they did then. So what happened to change what seemed to be an entrenched blight on Thailand? A SUCCESS STORY IN MOTION In the late 1960s, the King of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, began a project to reforest the northern regions of Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai to reverse the effects of the slash-and- burn farming techniques that were in use due to opium production. The Royal Project, as it was known then, also worked to eliminate the opium production in the northern provinces of Thailand by introducing other cash crops, such as coffee. Between 1972 and 1979, the Thai/U.N. Crop Replacement and Community Development Project was "implemented as a pilot project to explore the viability of replacing opium poppy cultivation with a variety of substitute crops (peaches, rice, etc.) and alternative sources of income, combined with related community development activities." (Source: Coffee Production Status and Potential of Organic Arabica Coffee in Thailand, Pongsak Angkasith, Chiang Mai University. By the 1980s, the Royal Project Foundation, in concert with the Highlands Research and Development Institute (HRDI), had created extension field offices helping to educate and train farmers to further improve the Arabica farming practices. Today, they have over 27 training and education sites in the north. This project has been hailed as one of the great success stories globally, and has been nominated for global prizes for its work on ending poverty, and social and environmental change. Opposite page, at top: Coff ee-fl ower tea brews alongside cascara at Soomio farm. Below: Looking down from above the clouds at Ata's farm in Doi Pangkhon. This page: Ata's children gather in the morning to grind coff ee on the farm. 47 www.baristamagazine.com