Rice Boogers

There's a definite texture to the air here in Thailand. You can really feel it when riding around on an open-air tuk-tuk or scooter; tiny particles stinging the cheeks. I wondered how long I was going to last in a country where you can actually touch the pollution, as opposed to just seeing, smelling, and tasting it; where it is highly recommended to wear a breathing-mask if you plan on staying outdoors for extended periods of time; where inhalers sell like hot-cakes in every 7-11. Of course poor sewage-systems and a lack of efficient waste disposal have a lot to do with it, especially in the big cities, but they only account for the god-awful smells you encounter here, more often than not. The real culprit behind the tangibleness of the air is the burning fields of rice.



Thailand is the world's largest rice exporter. Throw a rock anywhere in Thailand, and you'll probably hit a rice-farmer. Rice paddies produce a lot of methane, one of those gases turning our planet into a glacier-melting greenhouse. In fact, there is no other crop on the planet that emits more methane than rice paddies. A lot of water is used for the irrigation of rice-crops, to the point where the entire field is flooded over. Bacteria thrive in these saturated fields, feeding off of the manure used for fertilizer, and it's these bacteria that produce the methane. Farmers have been urged by the government to drain their fields from time to time, but many just ignore these requests. Recently, farmers began burning empty rice-husks instead of letting them rot out in the fields to create more rotten gas. In the farm regions surrounding Bangkok, this practice has been both economically and environmentally beneficial. The burning of leftover husks creates a more climate-friendly power source than coal or oil, decreasing the amount of imported oil. But in other regions, particularly the mountainous north, the fields are burned directly into the air, the resulting power not used as an alternative energy source. Mountains surround the northern cities, trapping the sooty air in like a flue. And this my dear friends, is why the air clogs my nose and stings my face.

Keep in mind that this was in September, October, and November, well after the close of the burning season, which ends sometime in the spring. So I can't imagine how thick and dirty the air is going to be come April. It's quite a Catch 22 the Asians are faced with. They can't possibly consider not producing rice. But if they continue to grow it in the traditional manner of flooding the fields, global methane emissions will continue to grow, and if they continue the slash-and-burn technique without transferring the fallout to reusable energy, it will soon become very uncomfortable to breathe in this country. I'm already getting way more boogers than I care to pick.