Agriculture in Thailand is a major source of income for many families, growing chilis, corn, and many other crops, but comes with its own challenges. A common farming method is “shifting cultivation”, which allows an area of land to be used for a few years, but it must ultimately be moved once the area has lost its nutrients. The problem is this renders large portions of land unusable for several years at a time, and does not always yield reliable harvests. This farming method has led to a significant increase in debt for guardians each year, negatively impacting their families’ income and leaving them unable to support all members of the household. To compensate for those losses, the guardians often resort to borrowing from informal lenders, which further increases their debt burden. Their intention is to finance the next year’s agricultural activities in hopes of cultivating more crops to sell, improving their family’s living conditions and alleviating their debt.
One Thai resident, Mr. Lod, had a debt of around $23,000 before joining the project, the result of losses in his maize farming financed through loans from middlemen and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives. In 2021, The Freedom Story staff in Thailand recognized the greater frequency of debt problems among families and planned to visit these families with the aim of reaching out to families. There, they conducted workshops to provide financial management education, inspire new career paths, and develop new occupations for caregivers who felt overwhelmed by their debt. This initiative was carried out in collaboration with the Government Savings Bank in Nan Province, and one especially fruitful idea that came from this partnership was the promotion of cultivating the bell pepper for chili sauce production.
Mr. Lod was the first guardian to experiment with bell pepper cultivation, starting with about 300 plants alongside his maize crops. The price of bell peppers proved to be more profitable, with lower costs associated with growing and a shorter harvesting period compared to maize. As a result, Mr. Lod decided to stop maize cultivation altogether and focused on bell pepper plants each year. This shift allowed him to manage costs and generate enough profit to support his family without accruing any further loans.
The success of this approach was shared with other scholarship students’ families in 2023, inspiring another guardian, Mrs. Phawirat, to stop shifting cultivation with her own crops. Partnering with the Royal Highland Project, Mrs. Phawirat has begun bell pepper cultivation for income, which has not only covered their living expenses and paid back their debt, but allowed the family to afford monthly medical trips for their daughter to Chiang Mai.
It is initiatives like these that highlight the importance of preventing child trafficking before it can even happen. Caregivers, in the face of debt and supporting their families, face the difficult decision of pulling their children from school, which then increases the risk of trafficking. By finding ways to empower families with long-term, sustainable solutions for their living, we are able to stop trafficking before it can happen.
Other families in the project have begun to change their practices in shifting cultivation each year, instead implementing integrated farming methods to provide multiple income streams and make the best use of their land. Additionally, mixed farming practices and using crops like bell peppers ensures that families can have income streams year-round. Some guardians have even begun paying back their debt, significantly improving their living conditions for their families. This positive community change is achieved through continuous engagement with the guardians and collaboration with the entire family. A shared commitment to enhancing their living conditions and a willingness to take action and learn new things have been crucial to the success of these families, brought to fruition by a simple bell pepper.
