Word: catfish
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...gourds grow heavy on the vine, and the catfish splash merrily in their ponds. At the Learning Center of Sufficiency Economy in Southern Thailand's Yala province, the vision of Thai agriculture as set out by the country's King Bhumibol Adulyadej has reached its fecund best. Like many other parts of Thailand, villagers come to this agricultural laboratory to learn from the monarch's Sufficiency Economy philosophy, which bundles together concepts of sustainable development, rural self-reliance and equitable income distribution. But there's a difference to this vast botanical project: unlike others in the rest of Thailand, this...
...Sufficiency Economy theory have been stripped away in the south, there's no question that the royal economic philosophy draws succor from the Buddhist concept of the Middle Path. (Indeed, one fish-breeding program at the center was recently suspended because a Buddhist monk had opined that killing catfish for their sperm was unspiritual.) Says a Muslim academic who declined to be named for fear of offending the government: "We need justice for abuses committed by the state against our people, not Buddhist teachings on agriculture." (Read about southern Thailand's forgotten conflict...
...rankings, as if all earthly fauna were competitors in an endless evolutionary Olympics. Our sense of taste, for example, outperforms a pigeon's and a tiger's (it turns out that tigers can't taste sweetness--sorry, Tony) but is crushed in turn by that of a lowly catfish, which has taste buds not just in its mouth but all over its body...
Unfortunately, while 21st century Washington has demonstrated an impressive ability to spend money quickly, it has yet to prove that it can spend money wisely. And the chum of a 1 with 12 zeros is already creating a feeding frenzy for the ages. Lobbyists for shoe companies, zoos, catfish farmers, mall owners, airlines, public broadcasters, car dealers and everyone else who can afford their retainers are lining up for a piece of the stimulus. States that embarked on raucous spending and tax-cutting sprees when they were flush are begging for bailouts now that they're broke. And politicians...
...some argue, farming tigers when we raise tuna or striped bass or cod," says Brian Halweil, a senior researcher with WorldWatch, a Washington-based environmental NGO. By contrast, the fish species at the core of the millennia-long tradition of fish-farming in Asia and parts of Africa - catfish, carp and milkfish - actually require less fish input than is ultimately harvested, because they are herbivorous or omnivorous. In Asia, the idea of feeding several times more fishmeal to get one pound back would seem sheer folly. "Ultimately that is really where the solution is - to cut back on these carnivorous...