Burning season

(Baonghean) - On a May afternoon, along the road from Khe Kien intersection to Luu Phong village (Luu Kien, Tuong Duong), the hot sun made us feel suffocated and stuffy. In the distance, on both sides of the road, the fields of the Thai people still had scorch marks. Some fields had been burned for a long time, some fields were still smoking. The Thai friend who was with us briefly informed us: "The season of burning fields has come again."

Seeing our curiosity, he took us to a field in Khe Kien village. It looked very close from the road but it still took fifteen minutes to walk. We chatted with a Thai couple who were busy gathering dry trees that had been cut down a few months ago to prepare for burning. Seeing strangers, the couple seemed hesitant.

Through a few words, he said: He is Lo Van Long and his wife is Quang Thi Lien, they are from Yen Tinh commune (Tuong Duong) and have settled here for 3 years. 3 years is also the time he has burned 3 fields. He said: "When we first came to Khe Kien village, we had no land, my wife and I had to burn the fields which took half a day to walk. Now that we have been allocated land and forest, we have burned these fields for production."

Quang Thi Lien's family is burning the fields.

We asked, people gave us the forest but we burn it every year to make fields like that, when we run out of land, where will we get the land to work? Mr. Long said: "By that time, the old fields will be good and we will burn them again. And this land is also left by our in-laws". When we asked: "Why don't you gather it all in one place to burn, but spread it out in piles everywhere like that? Doing so can easily cause forest fires". Ms. Quang Thi Lien standing nearby said: "We have to burn it like that so that there is a little bit of humus everywhere, otherwise there will be good places and not. If the fire spreads, it will only be a little bit". Looking at the hot Lao winds blowing on the high hills, we suddenly felt worried, just a small spark of fire spreading is enough to burn down the nearby forest, let alone "a little bit" as Ms. Lien said.

We continued to Xoong Con village, on both sides of the road were large hills that had been cleared by the people to plant a new corn crop. We went up to the field near the road to see people weeding corn. The corn plants were growing as big as a hand without nitrogen fertilizer under the poor soil, growing weakly in the blazing sun. A whole forest of about 3 hectares was starting to cover itself with new green, but the corn field above was still a dull yellow color due to the fire that started when the field was burned. We met Mr. Lo Van Toong and his wife Vi Thi Vinh while they were resting. Hearing that we wanted to learn about the new crop season, Mr. Toong said: “This field has been done for a season. Last year, it was still good when we burned it to plant corn, but this year it has started to deteriorate a lot. We will probably have to do a new crop next year.”

The hardship of working hard all day in the mountains and forests made Toong's face even more haggard. He said: This large plot of land is shared by three households. It's very hard but the harvest is not much. Every farm has a good first season. At that time, the land is still fertile so the plants grow well, but by the second season, they want to give up. Since he got married, he can't remember how many times he has burned down the fields. He only knows that when the land can no longer produce, he has to give up.

When we asked: “Why don’t you fertilize the land for long-term use? If you keep burning forests to make fields like this, and the fire spreads to the protective forest, you are violating the law.” He said: “Everyone knows it is a violation, but if you don’t make new fields, what will you eat? Now the State has given us forests for production, but we can’t do anything, we just keep burning one field to another to plant trees. When we run out of forest land, we return to the old fields. They said, how can we fertilize on steep hills like this? If we fertilize, it will all be washed away when it rains heavily.”

Talking to us, Mr. Vi Van Phuc - a forest protection officer at Luu Kien line said: “In this dry season, the villagers start burning fields to prepare for planting. This is a production practice of the villagers for generations. Every year, the unit coordinates to propagate and educate the people about some of the dangers of burning forests for cultivation such as increasing the risk of forest fires and gradually losing forest area, but it has only limited it to some extent. Fortunately, up to now, every household has burned on the forest land assigned to them for production, and there has not been a case of fire spreading to the protective forest.”

Dao Tho

(Ky Son)