You mean like…DDT?

or, the importance of the Chiang Mai University Farmer’s Market

This is a post for my friend Sarah Nelson, who works for the Pacific Coast Farmer’s Market Association in San Francisco and took me to many wonderful Farmer’s Markets – and farms – when I visited her in early October, before I moved to Thailand.

These are some pictures from a Farmer’s Market that happens on the grounds of Chiang Mai University’s

where there also appears to be a working farm.

I would like to find out more about this farm, which I know nothing about. Our friend Nancy, who took us to the Farmer’s Market, where she buys her weekly produce as well as cooked food to eat during the week – a common practice in Thailand – told us that the vendor/farmers participating in the market and the produce they are selling is not from the University’s farm at all. The University just sponsors the Farmer’s Market.  I don’t know if that means the University’s farm is just for learning and research purposes, or if they sell their produce elsewhere.  Perhaps I will look into this.

The Farmer’s Market is pesticide-free and partly organic. We have heard that Thailand uses heavy-duty pesticides, some of which would be illegal in the United States or Europe.  I did a small bit of research while writing this blog about the pesticide issue. Here is a rather scary quote from a paper published at the site of a farm and sustainable research center just north of Chiang Mai (panyaproject.org):

“At latest count, out of the 58 pesticide products we’ve identified as commonly used in Thailand and in our region here in the north around Pun Pun Farm in particular…32 are moderately to highly acutely toxic to humans 14 are possible human carcinogens, and 9 are known human carcinogens 15 are cholinesterase inhibitors (indicating neurotoxicity) 19 are suspected endocrine disruptors 8 are reproductive or developmental toxins 30 are classified as “Bad Actors” by the Pesticide Action Network and 19 represent known or potential threats to groundwater contamination.”

Hmmm…

The market is only partly organic, Nancy said. Organic seems to be a more difficult step that requires more education of and support for the farmers but awareness is slowly growing of the importance of organic food, and there are more markets available to farmers willing to put in the time and money to change their method of crop production.

Like many places in Thailand, the food and produce here look beautiful and sometimes the Thai do wonderful things like tie up a set of various herbs and veggies with a thick piece of banana trunk and staple it closed.

Or sell all kinds of fruit and vegetable juice, like passion fruit and gotukola (the green ones) in little plastic bags floating in a tub of water.

Or just have wonderful things, like what seem to be thousands of varieties of ginger and things like ginger, and the constant fresh coconut hacked at the top with a big machete as you watch and given to you to drink from.

I also quite liked the walk there, which involves crossing a mysterious vast expanse of concrete that could neither be said to be empty nor full.  These kinds of spaces are some of my favorite places to walk. They remind me of something.

Maybe we will go back next Saturday to get some more pictures, and more passion fruit juice, and to reduce our neurotoxicity.

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