Shouldn’t the traditional professions of Phuket be at least to some extent protected? After all, the farmers were there first. Their claim to use of rural land is legitimate and centuries old, and many of today’s farms go back decades.
Apart from the reek of pig or chicken manure there’s also a whiff of stupidity about the whole situation. Imagine you’re a developer. You spot a likely piece of land, green and surrounded by mountains, a pleasant enough place for middle class homes.
Wouldn’t you check the surrounding countryside? Would you somehow fail to notice there’s a pig farm close by? But somehow you do.
Saddled with the problem you do two things: you put pressure on the farmer to move out or at the least to clean up his or her act; and you pray that the wind is in the right direction when the buyers – who also don’t bother to check the neighbourhood – come to look at the homes you’re building.
As a buyer, all you can do is go to the authorities and tell them, “I’m new here, but there’s an old and filthy farm close by and it’s getting right up my nose. Do something.”
Oddly, the authorities actually go through the motions.
They would not need to if farmers – notorious the world over for their resistance to change – would accept that, in this day and age, it’s not okay to foul the air and water for miles around. It’s stupid.
In the end, of course, the farmers will lose. Phuket doesn’t need farms because it can import produce every bit as good from other parts of the country.
Farmers in Thailand will soon be as distant a memory as tin miners.