A warning to farangs living in Thailand.
Be prepared for an onslaught of 'sick buffalo' complaints from your girlfriends, as up-country relatives switch from tractors to water buffaloes to work their fields.
The King of Thailand has proclaimed for years that the water buffalo was a vital part of the nation's agriculture and the animal is more valuable than ever to the future of sustainable farming, as fuel and fertilizer prices have risen to non-profitable heights. The King has been donating buffaloes to rural communities on a small scale since 2000 with hopes that their offspring shall reincarnate the old school of farming, however most farmers need to be educated on the benefits of the traditional plowing and fertilizing the rice paddies as well as be weaned from the technological crutches of the 20th Century.
No easy task for a ill-schooled Isaan farmer who knows that water buffaloes need water to thrive or they forage for food in the nearest forest, but water buffaloes provide free fertilizer for the farmers. Fertilizer more enriching to the soil than the petrol by-products. Nearly 30% of the nations farmers have made the switch to buffaloes, while another 70% are trapped by debt to banks to continue with the tractors, fuel, and chemical fertilizers.
"We can't afford new tractors," said Nataporn Saeng Po, a leader of a farmers' group. "Here they are 72,000 baht [$2,150], not counting fuel costs, while a large buffalo is only 25,000 baht [$746] and unlike the tractor, if you invest in buffaloes, they multiply."
Tractors never fuck, they only fuck up.
Some farangs might go so far as to trade in their SUVs.
It's a rough ride without AC, but the water buffalo might be the wave of the future.
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