Happy man says no to lust, greed

With vegetables and fruit trees on his farm, rice in the field, fish in the pond and ducks and chickens in the farmyard, Sawai Panyoyai is safe amidst the economic calamity.

Without a fancy house or car, grand furniture, expensive clothes or imported brandname ornaments or holidays abroad, the 40-year-old farmer is never sorry.

For Sawai, happy is the man who can rely on himself, is free to run his life, kept warm by tender love and care of the family and has plenty to eat, with or without money, from his own land.

Before he arrived at the truth of life that is now shielding him from the world of lust and greed, Sawai was no different from others, frenziedly chasing richness during the boom years of the bubble economy.

But when his get-rich-quick attitude hurt, Sawai began to realise something was wrong with going after materialistic wealth.

The man dreamt of big money from growing tobacco and baby corn. His dream shattered, however, as he virtually had nothing left after each harvesting season.

As tobacco and baby corn required heavy use of fertilisers and pesticides, Sawai learned a painful fact that he could not be rich and that he had pursued fortune at the cost of the health of family members.

A large part of income earned from the crops was normally paid for chemicals and medical care for exposure to toxic substances.

"I went broke and suffered deep stress. This was not the life I wanted. I needed a change," Sawai said.

He looked for advice from the Northnet Foundation and finally agreed to switch from mono-cash crop to mixed farming, which emphasises the production of varieties of plants on a farm, without using chemicals.

The first year was hard as soil had already lost nourishment and Sawai himself still did not know the nature of the vegetables he had grown.

Success, however, came sooner than he thought. At the end of the second year, he found, to his surprise, that he had enough money left to repay debts he owed to the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives.

Sawai figured out that his "green supermarket" helped put money in the saving box.

Because he had almost everything to eat from the farm, he rarely had expenses. At the time when his land was still filled with tobacco and corn, going to the market meant he had to have money with him to buy food. Now he goes to the market to bring some money back from sales of vegetables left in surplus of his family's consumption.

"Now we go to the market and have some money left. Even if it is only 10 baht, I am still happy. I really am," he said.

It has been five years now after Sawai began practising mixed farming on his 12-rai plot in Ban Pa Not, Tambon Mae Tha, Mae On sub-district, in Chiang Mai. In the fourth year, he bought a pick-up truck to deliver his farm produce to the market after buying a tract of paddy field, worth around 100,000 baht, a year earlier.

Sawai denied he is now back in the pursuit for worldly pleasure. He knows too well the differences between genuine gratification derived from his own ability to depend on himself and false happiness created by living in a fool's paradise to have any illusions.

"Money, for me, is just pieces of paper. What good can money do for you if you are left alone in the jungle and have nothing to buy?"

Even if he had 50 million baht now, Sawai said life would never change because he has already found the right path and would never turn back.

Thoughts of investing in a golf course or a housing estate have never come into his mind. Sawai said he did not want to be rich and to have to suffer stress caused by trying to beat competitors at the same time.

What about a Mercedes-Benz?

"I always ask my purse what I should buy. How can a nice, expensive car be useful on the rough land of my farm?"

Sawai had experienced for himself that hot money (fortunes made through illegal means) often comes quick, and goes quick.

He used to cut trees illegally and sell the logs from which he earned several thousand baht each time.

"But that money suddenly had gone as if we could not keep it and had to rush to spend it."

Unlike when he is producing "good things" for people to eat now that his wallet begins to swell. "I have never asked for it. It just happened," Sawai said.

What more can Sawai ask for? He is a happy man now.

He can produce good food for himself and others. His family is strong with love and understanding and will never collapse because no one has to abandon home to find jobs anywhere. All family members enjoy good health because they no longer suffer from chemical substances. He knows his future will forever be secured.

"The IMF? The economic woes? I can't see what these things can do to me," Sawai said.