N 64  Slash and Burn agriculture  Part 1

     

This time when I went back to my hometown Kunhing it coincided with the time when people were doing slash and burn. So the whole environment was blurry with either dense or thin smoke , that the Shan people call this time  “khao merng moe “or time when the countryside is blurred or unclear.

   

   During this time when we look at the roadside we will see plots of land , whether they be flat or on hillsides being cleared , trees cut down and burned and so are still in the smouldering state from which smoke rose and veiled the environment to become a hazy state.

   

In olden days the trees people had to fall down were much bigger than now, but as we all know there are not much big trees left because of excessive logging , but only small trees and even these, people cannot leave them to grow into big ones as the land is needed for cropping. So among the negative aspects that slash and burn agriculture brings deforestation give the most ruinous effect.

     

Seeing this ancient agriculture method still in use and thinking about its consequences my heart ached   and could not help worrying for our country’s future.

  

  In the evening sitting in a bamboo hut while we were attending a novitiating ceremony in Kunhing we happened to talk about bamboo. Only last year one nephew Sai Hong told us about how people were digging bamboo shoots, dried them and send them to China by trucks . So he was worried that there will be no bamboo left to build traditional huts like this for the novitiating ceremonies  which are held every year . I said it was lucky that there are bamboos to be used to this day.

   

   And the I brought up the slash and burn method of agriculture, that I had seen burning plots with smouldering trees all along the way and that it was a shame to waste all those  land and trees .Even the small trees that are left after the big ones were fallen are burnt again , so what will become of our land in the future , only bare hills and mountains and our country will gradually become desert land together with all the bad consequences.

      

I was amazed when one ordinary elderly woman replied that only some people in our area own fields that can be cultivated according to its seasons and that they can be called a little well off people. But there are many people who does not own a field or land that can be cultivated but  has to grow rice , their staple food for their subsistence using slash and burn method . To grow rice with this  method is not an easy job, so in the Shan language it is called “hai “ which means  “cry “ . To earn a crop people who cultivate has to cry. She added that our Shan people have no choice but when the season comes have to go and look for a place to grow their precious rice.

to be continued….