Idle banter forum

My work time in Thailand finished a few years ago and I decided to come home to work (in Canada.)

I used to work for Thailand's Department of Agricultural Extension in Prachinburi as a Plant Protection Officer. Basically, we traveled around the province stopping in villages and at farms to give info on proper pesticide usage, and stopping their use entirely. We helped farmers create and maintain organic farming practices.

This was counter to what the pharmaceutical companies were doing, and still do. They come into places where there has been crop trouble either from disease, infestation, or something else that might require a quick chemical fix. Product is given away for free ("the first one is always free") with little to no training on how to use the product(s). Enough product will be left for a crop or two, and then reality kicks in ... the farmer has to pay for the product which he now believes he cannot do without. Dependencies are formed, and we were supposed to be the addiction coucellors.

But like many instrumental social programs that make a difference in peoples' lives, it was gutted and all that remains is a thin shell of a department with a skeleton crew. It seems to be maintained now just to keep a few people on payroll.

I saw the job and applied for it. Having traveled for a couple of years in Thailand before, being an entomologist, a licenced pesticide applicator, and a public health inspector got me the job that paid more than a Bangkok police officer. Being single and out of debt made it easier to move.

I don't work in SE Asia now, but I did a stint with an import-export business in Bangkok a few years back. I used to want to start my own business, importing from Thailand to the States, but I'm just not interested anymore. In the future, I do hope to move back to SE Asia indefenitely and do some teaching/volunteering/refugee related work/writing/photography, but we'll see.

Meant to say re Tilapia, it reminds me of how the sales people for breast formula work. When we had #1 in Bangkok, we'd heard about these people -- they'd show up, explaining that breast feeding was too much hassle etc etc and that formula was easy -- and here, here's the first week's worth for free.. Thankfully the hospital we used (Samitivej) didn't even let these people in the front door.

Madmac - oil or military? (in Africa I mean)

this is all very interesting!!

Tilapia - its a shame about what happened to that department but it sounds like you did some good work when you were there!

i've always wondered about working abroad but not sure what i could do other than teach

Somtam - do you just work with travelfish now and maybe some freeland writing? or do you have a 9-5 as well?

anyway, I hope more people repond!
Chris

Somtam ... breast milk formula pushers (a.k.a. Nestle), Monsanto, Pfizer, Ciba Geigy, GlaxoSmith, Dow, Novartis, Merck, J&J, crack and coke dealers, etc. ... the first taste is always free! There isn't much difference between these model citizens most of the time. Sometimes I think that they do not exist to supply markets, but to create them in order to supply them. That is probably a worn-out saying, too.

MADMAC ... I have to admit that I was blown away by the number of farmers NOT using chemicals. I thought that, aside from bananas and a couple other things, most of the stuff that was grown over there was verging on toxic. I was sadly/happily mistaken. I was working on durian, mango, rambutan, and pomello plantations that were completely organic, and whose owners taught the people working for them about how to farm organically. These were massive suppliers of fruit from Prachin. It was amazing.

Chemical misuse, mono-culturing, the salination and eventual death of paddy fields from shoddy shrimp farms, etc., was creating a lot of both agricultural and social problems. Farmers were, and still are, taking out loans just to put a crop in the ground thereby putting themselves and their kids in unsupportable debt (as Bruce Cockburn would say), with a hefty helping hand from the World Bank and IMF. This topic could go in a multitude of directions (eg. why poor farmer families give up their kids, or send them off to the big cities to see what fate awaits them.)

Finally the King stepped in and put the wheels in motion which lead to the creation of the department that I worked for. In many situations, probably like your father-in-law's, there was no need for any direction or help or anything of the sort because these folks were following time-proven farming methods, and surviving that way. Not everyone was, or is.

Chris ... you are Bill Shatner? I LOVE "Has Been" and your Bran Flakes commercials.

I plan to, with lots of green alien babes!

Thanks very much!!!

Bruce
I hate to say that your analysis was overly simple - I am sure you are aware of that. After all, there isn't space here for a dissertation.

In fact, there are times when the Laffarian economic approach is sound.

Krugman's work, is, quite frankly, not intellectually honest. He is an ideologue and as such he cherry picks his information to suit a thesis. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to Henry Kissenger!!! A Nobel Prize doesn't mean you are right.

This last economic meltdown was not caused by a certain economic approach, rather it was caused by lack of sufficient regulation, poor (and possibly corrupt) application of existing regulations, and an unfortunate tendency in American culture to approach personal finances in a very undisciplined manner (i.e. you save for your purchase, then yu purchase it). The crash of the housing market stemmed from two bodies - the Banks, who wanted to make money without due consideration of risk, and provided unsound loans without sufficient down payment. The American people, who bought these homes without sufficient down payment and without sufficient funding in their banks to cover their mortgages should they become unemployed. This artificially inflated the value of homes as homes were being purchased at an increased rate. This is a pyramid scheme, doomed. A very hard lesson has hopefully been learned (or not).

There are also times, however, (when we have insufficient money moving through the system) where a stimulus approach is necessary. High taxes DO limit the potential for investment in the private sector - so the question for economists and politicians is how you find the right mix at the right time for optimal economic performance.

Ideologues like Friedman and Krugman want to believe that one size fits all. That's just not the way it is. Different economic times call for different economic approaches, and a system needs the flexibility to deal with it.

Also, remember that when a government collects taxes it is essentially extorting it's citizenry. "Give us 'x' percentage of your take or else." I understand the necessity of it, but because it's so ubiquitous, we have come to accept it without giving it a thought. A just government (which I admit truly just government is tough to find - we're lucky if get reasonable) takes only that what it really needs from it's citizens pockets. Redistribution of wealth is not the role of government. If you leave it to government to do that, I can guarantee they will not do it in a just manner. The more wealth you take from the rich, the less you leave them to reinvest in projects that put people to work and the more incentive you provide for a "gold Flow" - the moving of capital out of the country in question (legally or illegally) to places where the country in question can not tax any of it.

Bruce
I am not being contrarian here. I am simply saying that if governments lean right or left consistently in economic policy - they will get it wrong. There has to be flexibility in the approach.

Bruce
I don't disagree. Facts are usually used to buttress positions. But, of course, one can cherry pick their facts to support their arguement, discarding those facts that speak contrarian to the desired position.

I've only spent two years in the last 25 in the US.

But I still don't think Krugman is intellectually honest. Reminds me of George Monbiot.