*The seminar will be held in English.
Meeting room limits up to 50 attendees.
【About the Talk】
Over the past decades Chinese meat consumption has skyrocketed. Not able to meet demand due to a scarcity of agricultural land and geopolitical tensions with major beef-exporting countries, China has set its eyes on Southeast Asia as a supplier of meat, as well as a provider of ‘land to grow the meat’. The Central Dry Zone in Myanmar has a large cattle surplus, and a quasi-legalized food supply chain has come into existence over the last decade. Yet Myanmar cattle are scrawny, need fattening and care before China will accept them. The borderland area straddling Northwest Thailand and Southeast Myanmar has emerged as an area where the Anthropocene and Plantationocene become entangled. This is a longtime conflict zone: cattle and other animals pass the border as refugees from several ethnic groups flee from the Burmese army. Forested areas are converted into agricultural land to grow corn, cassava, rice, and hay for animal feed production, while burning stalks after every harvest season causes massive swaths of PM 2.5 and air pollution over Northwestern Thailand, covering Chiang Mai province in a haze for a few months each year. Agricultural laborers are largely undocumented migrants from Myanmar, whose lives have come to depend on the ‘illegal but licit’ work in precarious conditions for the purposes of crop and animal feed production. While macro-level impacts of meat production are well-described in terms of required land and water resources, this paper sheds light on its many meso-level entanglements and argues that the Plantationocene manifests itself clearly in this Myanmar-Thailand borderland.
【Note】
- The organizer reserves the right to amend the program and to limit or refuse entry to any person at any times, and will preclude those who are absent twice without notice.
- A confirmation email will be sent to you after the registration is closed.
- To prevent waste from the disposal of single-use cups, kindly bring your own water bottles or mugs.
