Enchanted Forests? by Karen Rogers

When I signed up to join a mission project in Thailand, I didn’t anticipate that seemingly enchanted forests would become an important part of what I experienced there. I knew that UHDP (Upland Holistic Development Project) included agroforestry as one of its numerous means of helping the people of the northern mountain villages.

Most of those people came to Thailand after fleeing persecution in Myanmar. They had hidden in forests as competing groups of marauding militias ransacked their villages. Many of the families were separated as the young, and the old died of malaria, and as boys were forced into lives of military service apart from their loved ones. These struggling tribal people arrived in northern Thailand without property, without legal status, and without specific means of beginning new lives in a strange land. They had to give up their important ancestral connections. They spoke different languages and had no access to education or health care. But hope took shape about 20 years ago when CBF missionaries Ellen and Rick Burnette moved to Thailand to begin work among the Palaung people.

One of the visions the Burnettes brought with them to northern Thailand was the possibility of converting the upland forests into year-round sources of sustenance and income. Where hillsides had previously been cultivated in single crops, such as rows and rows of commercial plantings of rubber trees, the Burnettes introduced diversity and sequencing of planted species. It was more than crop rotation. It was agroforestry—blending principles of agriculture into forests. So, for instance, rows of rubber trees might be intermixed with pineapple plants, papaya trees, fast-growing eucalyptus, slow-growing teak, coconuts, mangoes, etc. If one crop failed due to a glutted market, insect invasion, or drought, all was not lost. There were other fruit-yielding or profit-making plantings to support the families. And the plantings were carefully arranged so that plants which needed the shade of taller trees were mixed together, and plants which produced at different times of year were intermingled.

On our first morning at UHDP, our 2BC team helped to mix potting soil and plant tiny tea seedlings in a protected nursery. We then moved some older seedlings into beds of plants that would grow under shelter for months more before being transplanted to fields. It was interesting, but we witnessed the magic, the enchantment the next day.

We loaded into 4-wheel drive trucks and headed out along impossibly rough, rutted dirt roads that are impassable during the rainy season. We drove into forest lands, which Rick had not seen in the many, many years since he had moved back to the US to work with CBF Disaster Relief in Florida. What we saw was enchanting. On one side of the road—brown hillsides with scattered trees here and there. On the other side of the road, lush, green vegetation of all sorts. We stopped our trucks to pile out and take a look at the abundance before us. Rick pointed out plants that were entirely unknown to me, as well as familiar staples like mangoes and pineapple plants. The contrast from one side of the road to the other was stark. UHDP had been working for years with villagers who managed the fruitful side of the road. The results of their labor were obvious. Though their lives were still tenuous and fraught with many challenges, the villagers who worked those hillsides had year-round food to feed their families, and some produce to take to market. They had the security of knowing that their livelihood was not dependent upon the yield of a single crop or its susceptibility to climate change or shifting world markets.

The enchantment we were privileged to witness at work in the hills of northern Thailand was not the work of magic spells of wizardry. It was the delight of seeing the vision of the Burnettes and UHDP staffers come to fruition. It was knowing that God uses the minds and hands of committed visionaries to bring creation into balance. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Psalm 96:12 (NIV).

Agroforestry techniques are only one aspect of the holistic approach UHDP is using to meet the needs of the hill tribes in northern Thailand. The UHDP staff works with spiritual growth, human rights, backyard farming, women’s equality, and more. I am thankful that God is at work there and that 2BC has been privileged to support that work. You may find more information about UHDP and its services here.