The hill-tribes and the Lisu

The Lisu and the other hill-tribes when first arrived in Northern Thailand were allocated bits of lands in the mountains under certain conditions.
The allocated land size was calculated by the number of family members at the condition to farming and working on this land enabling a better living and autonomy.
More recently, some restrictions are being made by the Thai government and the tendency is to reduce the amounts of land allowance per capita.

These new land restrictions are of course quite alarming for the Lisus farmers in the mountains whom even though their hard and tedious work, their resilience is once more challenged..
Added to the ‘usual’ issues, the weather unreliability, drought, not enough rain or too late, hence villages water shortages and so on..
The new land restrictions and shrinking is not going to help! It was already tough, it might probably become more difficult.

These Lisus farmers, have adapted and learned how to diversify their crops.

Most of the time, they had a few pigs and some chickens, some have done this way for many generations.
They slowly shifted to other crops, and many did also, sales became tougher, and market prices cheaper.
They started to add ginger to their crops and the same happened, many others did, sell at much lower prices, market prices went down..
Recently they’ve switched to orchards and planted mangoes (mamuang) and longans (lamyai) not once was there a machine used for the past 15 years..
The new government land restrictions and shrinking are not going to help them neither..