Sorry Dasho Nishioka- A Book Review

Dasho Nishioka (1933-1992)

The story of Dasho Nishioka and his life in Bhutan is no short of a fairy tale; I still can't fathom how a sophisticated metropolitan had possibly left behind his comfortable Japanese life and decided to work in Bhutan in 1964? 

The book, Dasho Keiji Nishioka- A Japanese who lived for Bhutan by Tshering Cigay and Dorji Penjore deserves the recognition of being the first to recount the life of a great being who by all means deserved to be remembered. However, it should be forgiven for not being a comprehensive biography, one that is worthy of celebrating an extraordinary life and works of Dasho Nishioka.  

A foreigner who is awarded Bura Marp by His Majesty the King, given a grand state funeral, awarded Druk Thugsey Medal posthumously, built a chorten in his memory and has a flower named after him, if he is not worth several volumes of books then something is missing.

Dasho Nishioka Chorten in Paro

His numerous accolades are not what defines Dasho Nishioka, the true value of the man is in knowing why has he been recognized so grandly. His death from a tooth infection in 1992 at the prime age of 59 could have been avoided if he was anywhere outside Bhutan. He paid the ultimate price for his dedication to this country. When lamenting the loss of a great being, his daughter, Yoko says her father had nothing much to live for, having achieved so much in his short life. His was truly a short and fat life. 

I have heard of a certain Japan Sayab who revolutionized agriculture in Bhutan but it was only in this book that I connected all the dots and began to form a whole picture that I could appreciate. He came to Bhutan in 1964 when life in Bhutan was physically daunting; only Thimphu and Paro were connected by road and it wasn't until the 1980s that we had electricity. But despite the formidable odds the Japanese volunteer chose to stay beyond his two years assignment and gave 28 years of his life to Bhutan, until his death. He spent five years of his life in Bhutan in Zhemgang, the Dzongkhag that took weeks to reach on foot back then and that still is considered a difficult place in 2020. 

Dasho Nishioka's Home in Panbang

A prosperous life awaited him in Japan but he laboured in Bonday Farm to change agriculture in Bhutan. The book gives us an overview of his experiments and initiatives to mechanize farming, improve seeds, enhance yield, create access to market, improve storage, initiate processing, packaging and exporting, build the capacity of the farmers, leverage on the organic brand from Bhutan. What? déjà vu! 

If I hadn't read this book I would be disillusioned into thinking that we have come a long way but half a century later we are still talking about the same issues in agriculture. My conversations with Dr. Lam Dorji on his 'farm to market' project and with Farmer Sangay on Farming 4.0 will never be the same. I want them to read the book and have a soulful conversation with them on how we failed Dasho Nishioka. 

This year the pandemic forced us to wake up to the hard reality that we are still not capable of producing our own food, not even rice. The book tells us that Dasho Nishioka succeeded in enhancing the rice yield three times by improving the seeds. How much have we enhanced it since? It's a shameful revelation of our hypocrisy that we haven't been faithful to the mission that Nishioka started. We left it to him. 

On page 59, a picture of Bonday Farm from the 1980s is juxtaposed with another one taken from the same spot in 2010, almost 30 years apart, and in sharp contrast to the common expectation that the Farm would have flourished into a mega farm, one could see the farm was doing better in the 80s than 30 years later. 

The book relates how even back in the days Dasho Nishioka had to bargain with insincere and lazy Bhutanese to work hard on their own farms by means of reward and punishment. Imagine the frustration of a hardworking Japanese when faced with our suffocating complacency. Had we inherited a little bit of Nishioka essence we won't be having the debate on food security today. We will be exporting premium organic food to the world.

But Sorry Dasho Nishioka, we failed you. Should you come back somehow and see how far we have reached since you left you will be heartbroken.

This book should be read like an initiation prayer by every Bhutanese who joins the agriculture sector so that they recognize and appreciate the history of modern agriculture in Bhutan, and about the foreigner who put his everything in it; to let them question why we are still where we began and to inspire them to work toward a real change with the dedication that would have won the approval of Dasho Nishioka.

The book that was published in 2011 deserves a second edition with more contents on the legend's private life in Bhutan to make it a complete biography. The book needs better design and change in the paper type (non-glossy) to make it reader-friendly while printing the pictures on glossy paper. 

SelFish Sufficient

Last Weekend, I took my fish loving daughter to Gelephu Fishery. It's a place my cousins told me lots of stories about in school days. They tempted to visit the place but it took me over 20 years to make it here myself. In these year I have become a father and even my daughter has developed fascination for aquatic life.

Beautiful Office with romantic campus, but smell of fish is unavoidable

But I was never really prepared to see so big an area for fishery and so many tanks in our own country. Going by the size of the fishery here I am wondering why we are importing fishes from across Phuntsholing. Where all the fishes from Gelephu Fishery go?

Touring the Tanks

I am impressed by the range of projects this fishery is undertaking: from piggery to aquarium making. The piggery is an integral part of fishery. There are as many pigsty as fish tanks. Though it might sound disgusting to hear that the pigshit goes to fish tank but that's the indication that the fishes coming out of this tanks are very organic. 

The fishery is also raring exotic aquarium fishes to be sold along with aquariums and I think it's a smart move because they know best about fishes.

Happy Fish Lover- But we didn't see a fish that day

It was sunday and we had to take special permission to get access to the facility, but without any activity like feeding or harvesting the shy fishes didn't show up, which disappointed my daughter. But she grew excited when we peeped through to window of the exoctic fish unit.

We didn't see a fish that day but going by the size and number of tanks I strongly feel that it can feed whole of Bhutan with organic fishes- because we don't know where and how the fishes we import are rared. Bhutanese deserve to feed on healthy food. 

Elephant Problem, Bee Solution

I was watching a documentary on Aljazeera last evening that gave me a wonderful surprise- can you believe elephants are afraid of bees? Jim Carey is right, size doesn’t matter. Well this is one of nature’s many unusual phenomenons. After seeing how elephants panic and run away when they hear buzzing of bees my heart went out to the coward giant.

But the documentary was not intended at insulting elephants whatsoever, it was rather about how farmers in Kenya have used this weakness in elephant to defend their crop. Elephant is the last animal anyone wants to see in their fields because they are infamous for wiping off the entire harvest in a night. Kenya is home to a large population of elephants, which is good news for nature lovers but a very bad one for farmers whose only source of livelihood is their crop. They have been in continuous state of war for survival ever since the natural habitats of elephants were disturbed by the growing human population and developmental activities.

Killing elephants is the only option the farmers had but that was illegal, and other option was to die of hunger. They don’t have the luxury of using electric fence like Bhutan (They don’t even have the power to light their homes). But out of the blue an idea came that is going to change everything. Now farmers are encouraged to do bee farming along with their usual crops. The bee hives are hung strategically around the field interconnected by a string that runs around the field like a fence. When elephants encroach into the farm they will touch the string, which will shake the bee hives and excite the bees. And you know that happens when elephants hear the bees buzzing- right they run for their lives.

Bee Fence!

In southern Bhutan, our farmers are bothered by elephants too, and the best we have done so far was setting up electric fences around the fields. Due to heavy investment government could not provide electric fences to all the farmers. It will take another round of foreign grants from friendly countries to have our southern farms protected against elephants. But there are a few questions we have to ask:

1.       Is the investment worth the return?

2.       Is the method sustainable?

3.       Is it Eco-friendly?

4.       Is it safe for other wildlife?

5.       Is it safe from humans?

Bee fencing method will not only be the answer to all the questions but also give farmers sweet harvest of honey. It will defend them from elephants and also enhance their harvest with so many bees pollinating their crops. Solar electric fence might sound like a very green idea until you see the cost attached with it. After listening to Gunter Pauli, the founder ofBlue Economy, I admire what Kenyans have learned from nature. When will we do this? 

 

This Video explains Blue Economy!

Rinchengang Aree- From Where I live

The famous Rinchengang Aree(Paddies in Rinchengang)in Wangdue covers two beautiful hills facing Wangdue Dzong. If the whole paddies grew rice it could feed Wangdue for a year but ever since I came here I never saw those paddies cultivated. The famous name of the landmark lives only in the famous jokes of Phuba Thinley, where wrinkled foreheads are compared to those paddies in Rinchengang.

Lets look at Rinchengang Differently...

People blame lack of water supply for their inability to cultivate, while I see lack of commitment and abundance of greed toward easy money through sale of land to construction industries. Those paddies are registered as wetland and therefore cannot be transacted which is why they are left uncultivated for years, knowing that someday it will remain wetland no more.

My Kitchen Garden (10X4 m yet enough)

I live a few kilometers across the river and I have used a small piece of land around my house as kitchen garden. In these two years I have discovered that the soil in Wangdue is nothing less than gold. There is nothing that doesn't grow in Wangdue. I grow sixteen varieties of vegetables and I have not visited Sunday Market for months. I even share my produce with my friends. When the whole nation was worrying and about vegetable import ban, and crying over inflation in vegetable price I was in my kitchen garden wondering what the hell.

My Girl and her friend with Corn Harvest

I wake up early in the morning and work in my garden, and I keep working when the students walk through the gate, just to show to them that I grow my own vegetable and that they could do all the same. I often wished if children from Rinchengang saw me working so that they get inspired to look back at their endless paddies and see what they have left behind.

Radish, Broccoli, Chili, beans, you name it...

P.S. I wish if Lyenpo Pema Gyamtsho could look at the paddies once from across the river and ask if lack of water is justifiable when there is huge river flowing below Rinchengang.

Diseased Turnip: Call for Help!

Turnip may not be one among the best vegetables- some people in town may not have seen one yet, but people of Haa have woven their lives with it. Infertile soil deprived of favorable weather conditions forced Haaps to make their living by herding yaks and turnip is one among a handful of crops grown in Haa. Turnips goes in making the region's famous recipe- Haapy Hoenty. The leaves of turnip are dried to make Lhoom, which then becomes very good combination with phaksha seekham and shakam.
However, the harvest looks bad this year. During my recent home going, I found all the turnips in our garden yellowed and dying. My mother wasn't surprised, she told me that a disease had been spreading in the region for last two years. Once infected the turnip buds turns into chain of three balls(see the picture), something similar to radish and then dies out gradually. I inquired if they have reported to the agricultural officer of the region, to which they gave a casual no. Perhaps they didn't know that they needed help. How come people don't know that there is an office who could help? How come the three year old disease didn't receive remedy so far?

Boy posing with Healthy turnip bud (right hand) and two diseased turnips (left hand)
(the symbolism of healthy boy and injured boy in the backdrop is accidental)