Open Heart

 Open Heart - an activist dream of living on organic economy

Junya Yimprasert

Brief summary for friends and supporters of Open Heart,

Growing up from a farming family to me is an advantage – building me up not to be completely alienated from farming and nature. 

Even though my family’s farming methods closely followed the green revolution’s farming promotion model, during the 1960-1970s, we more or less depended on foods that we were able to find or grow naturally according to the seasons. When we were in the highlands planting cash crops, we lived on food we picked from the hills surrounding our land, and from what we could plant around our home. When we moved back to our paddy field, which was flooded for half the year, we had to buy more veggies but could catch fish almost throughout the year – cooking them fresh or preserving them in the form of fermented fish and shrimp-paste. My father is a very good cook when it comes to food sourced from fish. 

All of us kids waited for every season to come – waiting for the first palm fruits to fall from their 20 metre high tree, so we could run to see who reached them first and bring them back to our home to turn them into delicious steam rice-cakes and all kind of deserts.

During the early graining of the rice, not every house knew how to cook ‘Khaoyakoo’ from the young rice grain’s milk – it is one of the most heavenly deserts for me. We also loved to make ‘Khao Mao’ from grilling rice grain that’s a bit older, mostly done at night, relying on moonlight and the light from a gasoline lamp. Many of us kids and adults were all involved in making it, it was quite a process to grill it, then beat it in a big wooden mortar, blow the skin off, ready for mixing with fresh coconut meat and sugar – so yummy. \

Despite all of these beautiful seasons, we lived all year round with stress and the nightmare scenario of a vicious debt cycle. We never stopped wondering why we couldn’t get better yields or why the price was so low. Our family’s debts accumulated over the years – we never lived without debt.

My life changed once I went to university. During and since university times I have participated in many field trips to poor villages in over 60 provinces throughout Thailand. I was so often inspired when I heard those stories of farmers, indigenous people, fisherfolk, whose cash cropping efforts failed making them decide to go back to self-reliance farming. Agreat pity that there were only a handful of farmers who could manage to survive on their self-reliance and organic farming, usually they are people who live with truly understanding of the principle of Buddhist, Muslim or Christian, they believed in the same principle of living in respect of and in harmony with nature, and not taking advantage of others’ lives.

They said that working hard or working comfortably and being happy on the land should be the same – more work can mean more money but it usually also means more debt. Deciding to go with natural farming, organic farming, or forest farming meant that they worked hard but were happier because they were not stressed by excessive debt and exposing to pesticides or insecticides and their land is not damaged by chemical fertiliser.

What we learnt is that it needs strong courage and a belief in local wisdom to turn commercial farming into self-reliant farming. Mostly it would have taken them over ten years before they could become somehow and in some way ‘self-reliant’.

Even though my working life has been devoted to equal rights for migrant workers, demanding protection and security for industrial workers and fighting neo-liberal corporatisation, after many meetings, protests and field visits with people, activists and unionists in over 40 countries, I have strong doubts that Thais and 80% of the world’s population can achieve our demands for even basic social welfare from our governments that are more and more devoted to or bound by the neo-liberal free market agenda.

What we see is that during the past twenty years, those in the North that have social protections have been fighting very hard not to let their neo-liberal governments remove these social security protections that they need to provide to their citizens.

Enough of that – there is nothing there that we all don’t already know.

We need a breakthrough and ‘food security and food sovereignty’ is a key answer. The era of global warming is also a strong contributing factor to fast track us back to living in balance with bio-diversity and nature.

Open Heart is not my first attempt to follow my dream to live a ‘self-reliance farming lifestyle’. It started since 2007 after I left Focus on the Global South. But it was a complete failure – showing that to make the dream come true it needs more than just having a dream. That was a good lesson to learn.

My idea is not original; it is the lifestyle of our ancestors that our industrialised societies have destroyed.

My upbringing, education and work experiences have shown me the extent of suffering felt by so many of the poor and farmers in Thailand and throughout the countries of the South that results from the cheap manufacturing of goods at the bottom of the global production supply chain with heavy tax exemptions promoted by the export oriented policies of corrupt governments.

The phenomenon that the producers are not the consumers has widespread repercussions in every corner of the planet and in every industry, including in the food industry where workers who produce the food are starving.

Even in my hometown, within the biggest rice basin in Thailand, my brothers and sisters are now selling all their poor quality rice full of chemicals to buy ‘jasmine rice’ from Isan. What can be more ironic than that? Is there any love left in any of their farming apart from counting on how much money they would have from their paddy this year.

The whole lowland rice fields that cover many provinces of Thailand’s central plains are now poisoned with fertilisers, insecticide and pesticide. The flood season has spread it out from the fields to ponds and rivers, poisoning waters, poisoning the fish and spreading into all the vegetation and life forms that rely on the river. The river where I grew up is now completely dead and not many kids would swim in it because it full of itchy ‘Sherry shells’ that spread from the paddy fields to the river.

So this is how Open Heart Organic Home begins – a long desired move back to nature and a quite spontaneous action and fast move to make it a reality. It is no longer just a theoretical idea about the way forward to get us out of the control and manipulation of capitalist forces.

 Open Heart has several dreams and aspirations

The goal of OH is to be a model of a peaceful home, self-reliant in organic foods with self-produced household needs, and necessary income generating to cover the cost of our basic needs, and energy independence. Most of all, it is to become a place where people can live a peaceful life that is in harmony with nature and contributing to creative works, writing and arts.

The plan of action is . . .

1.  to build several buildings, homes, studios for large groups of friends and cottage(s) for small groups of friends
2.  to plant varieties of fruits, herbs and vegetables – in 2008 we counted more than 80 names of species that we know, and there are another 50 or more species that we don’t know the names of
3. to move toward self-reliance in household basic needs, water and electricity
4. to live a simple organic lifestyle because OH only comprises one acre of land – it cannot product much more
5. to generate Income from organic products and from food preserved from the farm and other organic farmers
6.  to be a retreat home for friends and activists who need to heal themselves from exhaustion and burnout
7.  to demonstrate the possibilities of food security in the era of a global financial crisis and climate change impacts

Note:

Open Heart is an activist dream to practice ‘theory of organic economy and organic farming’ but It would take a long time before Open Heart (which relies on the employment of two assistants) to make a profit from its own land and produce. The experiment is to see whether self-reliance for a small-scale farmer family would be possible if they don’t have capital costs and aren’t living under heavy debt. For small-scale farmers with heavy debt – the support for a debt management scheme should be introduced first to these farmers in order to subsidise the whole process of organic farming.

However, OH can be a place for combining the idea of living organic lifestyles on self-produced food with a creative space for writing, producing art works and media for social justice and sustainable development.

Open Heart is now entering its fifth year.

 What has Open Heart achieved so far?

November 2006:

negotiated the purchase of this one acre of land with only 1,000 USD on my credit cards – achieved it in the end – with half a million in loans from family and friends

December 2006:

started building houses and immediately planting varieties of fruits tree, vegetable and also few decorative flowers and plants

2007
During the time of building the houses, we continued to plant my favourite fruits, vegetables, herbs, and decorative trees and flowers.

January
Hosted an annual meeting of TLC while the construction work was going on; moved out of Bangkok and ended my life in the city since 1990 and returned to my roots of living a rural community life

March
With lots of struggle, the SCB approved a bank’s loan proposal of 500,000 baht; all of the money has been spent on the construction of the house and gardens

April
Employed Tik – 25 years old and a single mum – who stays right across from OH – on a half time basis to help around and look after the house, because I am not often home and the house has to be looked after

June
Stopped major construction – the house can now be lived in (but it has needed another four years to fix and tidy up the place)

At this stage OH provides many varieties of basic herbs and veggies.

October
Air – one of the local artists who helped with the construction of the OH – came to work for OH on organic farming

We started using bio-fertilisers made from products from the farms

December
Finally we have telephone landline and Internet

 

 

 

2008

Into producing for home need and some herbs that can be marketed. Start preserved food like sundry banana, mango pasted.

January Build ‘a reading hut’ – a small library at the entrance of the house for kids and villagers who are interested in reading.

27 Jan Opening of ‘Reading Hut’

Set up plants nursery area

Start planting economic herbs like Jiagulan and Stavia. Stavia is doing well but struggle with Jiagulan – very difficult herbs to grow.

We plants all year long and start planting more variety of veggies especially salad, radish, carrots, etc.

Now we have over 100 varieties of things grow in one acre

2008 was general a good year, achieving on growing more varieties of vegetables – starting sharing organic baskets to few friends – in time available.

June – Aug
Frankie and Greg from USD came to be volunteers at OH. They help teaching English to over 40 adults and kids signed up for the classes. It is free.

From mid year till early 2009, we support Tai, a young organic farmer, to continue his organic farm and exploring the opportunity to promote organic farming, and develop organic basket in Chiang Mai. The development of Organic Basket’s idea, following by engaging Keng and Oak to help with writing up stories of organic farmers to understand the difficulty and background and also that Keng and Oak can start their own organic farm. The work process only about six months due to financial constrain. The stories are to be developed and post.

2008 Into producing goods for home needs and some herbs that can be marketed; start making preserved foods like sun-dried bananas, mango pastes

2009         
A year of water crisis

New Year and International Labour Film Festival at Chiang Mai and at OH

March
We started to process the Effective Micro-organisms (EM) from lime, lemon grass, star fruits, and leaves

April
Decided to hire machinery to dig a pond at the end of the farm and lay more water supply pipes to reach the farming area

Diverted household grey waste water to the vegetable gardens

May – August
Junya on speaking and meeting tours and writing leave in 7 countries in Europe

July
Air, Keng, Oak, Tai worked on cleaning liquids from our EM

August
Tik lost the other half time job and OH adopted her so that she can have enough income to take care of her son and building her small cottage

October
Hosted a meeting for CAW and OH provided a comfortable space to discuss the sensitive issue concerning the work of peace activists


November
Fought a rat infestation and finally decided to remove the whole inside wall of the main house. This was a hard lesson for those who build houses next to the forest – it is important to think first about practical use issues not just about the cool design and beauty.

Retreat on Young Indochina Women Activists; 18 young women activists from Vietnam, Cambodia, Shan and Thailand. Received cooperation from the Asian Healing Art Centre to give lectures on how to take care of our own health and Reiki

Exposing these young activists to organic farming, community income generation activities and sex industry in Chiang Mai also teaching how to make organic washing liquid

This is a kind of activity that OH can develop and make as income generating activity; especially because Chiang Mai has many ways of exploring such organic oriented activities.

2010
produce soap bars

An even greater water crisis that became a water war with the village water management committee

The neighbour spent 2,000 euros to dig 100 metres down into the earth to find water, but failed.

Then we all decided to lay the pipes 400 metres along the dirt road to the nearest biggest reservoir. We decided to drop the process, as it is not ecological and economically sound.

The pond at the end of the farm cannot provide water for the vegetable gardens for more than two to three months of the year. By March, the pond is empty and we have to fight with the community which has water for flower farms but not for an organic farm that consumes 5 times less water than any of those commercial flower crops.

Lots of clearing and tidying, along the fences, clearing waterways, installing one more water tank, etc


Setback and obstacles

• Junya is not often at home to supervise the work of Air and Tik and manage the surplus products from the farm well enough to earn some extra income to cover the costs. Air has no experience in organic farming and believes little in any farming without the use of fertilisers and chemicals. It took nearly two years for him to start feeling proud of the products and present them to other people – also put them in the basket of the motorcycle to sell them in the villages.
• The start of OH had a big capital cost, which mostly came from debt, which is different to most farmers who own their land and house. So the heaviest burden is the need to pay back the debt, which the OH couldn’t provide.
• Water scarcity – OH has faced major water shortages from January until May. In the beginning period we used the community water supply but the community exceeded their ability to generate water for farming and restricted the use of water to be only used for the households. This caused huge problems for OH and the solution to water is not yet sustainable and secure.
• The theory of ‘self-reliance on organic economy’ needs a lot of strength and contribution factors. Mostly reducing living expenditure, from buying less and consume from what is needed from the home. To see the result it takes ten years and more.

April 2010 - Junya left for Europe and hasn’t returned since.

 Open Heart 2010
OH is awaiting for the returning of it's owner.