About a week ago, I teamed up with a group of Khemdro farmers and livestock officials to go to Tsirang to “go search for good cows” for the farmers to buy. The Livestock Department of our district has a cool scheme in place whereby farmers can qualify for subsidies to buy cattle of superior breeds. Understandably, our farmers jumped at the idea of upgrading their herd with some financial help from the government. So I took our Maruti Van out for a spin with several farmers in tow, headed for Tsirang – the land of great cattle since the good old days. The running gag throughout the ride was, “where did we leave the cattle in the first place to need searching?” The proverbial equivalent would be, “བཞག་བཞགཔ་མེད་པར་འཚོལ་ནི། which means, “searching for something without having lost that something to start with.
In addition, it was was strangely awesome to realize on the road that I was related to everyone inside the group in some way, however remotely. Small village!
Any roads, it was a good call that I joined the bunch. In addition to being a productive week, it was a super fun experience. Most of the time, my interactions with the farmers tend to be perfunctory and rather business-like in nature. This is partly unavoidable because the farmers are always very busy with their farm chores. They budget the limited time they have between tending to the cattle, sending the kids to school, working in the fields and helping out neighbors with more farm works. Naturally, they are always in a hurry. The following age-old Bhutanese adage puts it accurately:
དྲོ་པ་དཀར་གྱི་བཅད།། ཕྱི་རུ་གནག་གི་བཅད།།
This roughly means the farmers have to work hard from dawn till dusk – a true-enough statement even today.
So it was fitting that travelling together to Tsirang was a good opportunity to really engage with them. Sharing in their gossips about this and that person from these and those villages was always fun, whether on the road or among the cattle in Tsirang. It was also reassuring to discuss more serious topics such as the prospects of developing a strong dairy industry among the Phobjikha farmers and realizing that they are very interested to take it forward. That got me all the more incentivized because essentially, creating a sustainable dairy industry that is profitable for each and every farmer in Phobjikha is a goal dear to me.
This also made me think of generic cliche that gets thrown around a lot these days in national discourses on work and business, i.e. Bhutanese in general are lazy. I used to subscribe to this view before but in my line of work with farmers at the frontlines of food production in rural Phobjikha, I have increasingly come to realize that for one thing, the farmers are not lazy folks. They put their hands and feet where economic potentials lie. Spending a few days with the farmers, observing silently as they looked for the best cattle they could afford while they talked about how they are planning to improve their dairy productivity confirmed my view that our farmers are some of the most hard-working, enterprising folks who generate tremendous amount of concrete economic value.
On the non cattle side, it was interesting to notice two groups of farmers from differing cultural and economic backgrounds interact. An sharp contrast, for instance, is if you are in Phobjikha, everyone will invite you in for tea, no matter whether you mean business or not. In Tsirang, tea does not seem to be that big. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Khemdro farmers seemed especially cognizant of this fact. There were exceptions when we were all invited in for tea and we gladly acquiesced. On the upside, we didn’t need to find recourse to the bushes to relieve ourselves every now and then.
In addition, the whole place felt a bit different because in Phobjikha, villages are mosaics of large timber houses interspersed with numerous wooden huts. Settlements in Tsirang were sparse, farmsteads very clean and well-organized and the huts not so numerous as back home. Its terraces contrast sharply with the undulating potato fields of Phobjikha which at this time of the year would be green with the autumn turnips. However, in the end, it was re-assuring to find the farmers down there are equally smiley and gracious.
Most importantly, not only did the farmers manage to find the cows of their dreams- within the reasonable limits imposed by their budget and the significantly colder Phobjib climate – but we also managed to pull off some enjoyable sessions such as drinking Druk 11000 together! Because, you know, there is an old saying that goes:
ཆང་མར་འཛུལ། གཏམ་ཡར་འཐོན།།
This essentially means that as drinks disappear down the gullet, talks surfaces up out of the mouth. I believe there is a latin equivalent to this: in vino veritas – in wine lies the truth. And more the merrier!
On a rather rambling note, an unnerving observation I made was that there were relatively few number of young farmers among the farms we inter visited in Tsirang. More elderly farmers came out to greet us with offers to sell their cattle for reasonable prices than middle-aged farmers. Youthful farmers were few and far between. In retrospect, this chips away at my happiness of knowing that farmers are hardworking because, essentially, it seems fewer young people aspire to be farmers today.
That being said, my sojourn in Tsirang with some of the farmer members of Khemdro Detshen reassures me. For one, it proves that the resources pumped into improving their earning potentials will not go wasted. For another, it makes me realize that what I do has some semblance of value within community.
0 Comments