Si Sawat

Si Sawat
ActiveCannabis last recorded here in 2018
⛶
Hierarchy
Gene Pool	Tenasserim Gene Pool
Regional Complex	Malay Peninsula
Growing Region	Western Thailand
Geography
Country	Thailand
Province/State	Kanchanaburi Province
District	Si Sawat District
Coordinates	14.53, 99.17
Landscape
Area	3,000 km²
Terrain	Hills of northern Kanchanaburi around the Srinagarind reservoir; approximately Si Sawat District
Growing history
Dated news reports	2018
Documentation
Appellations	0
Accessions	0
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Si Sawat is a cannabis growing area in Si Sawat District, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand, in the Western Thailand growing region. A Karen man from a village in the district described cannabis sown with the upland rice crop, grown there since his grandparents' time and now kept on in secret and in smaller numbers. In 2018 district officials cut down 140 cannabis plants on a hilltop in the district.

Geography

Si Sawat District covers about 3,300 km² in the north of Kanchanaburi Province and has six subdistricts and 33 villages. The reservoir of the Srinagarind Dam divides Na Suan subdistrict in two, and Tha Kradan subdistrict holds Erawan National Park. The district office stands in Dan Mae Chalaep subdistrict. Its neighbours are Ban Rai District of Uthai Thani Province to the north; Nong Prue and Bo Phloi districts of Kanchanaburi and Dan Chang District of Suphan Buri Province to the east; Mueang Kanchanaburi to the south; and Sai Yok and Thong Pha Phum districts to the west.

Cultivation

Karen cannabis in the upland rice

For a book on cannabis in Thailand, ปฏิวัติกัญชาสยาม ๒๕๖๒ (Siam's cannabis revolution, 2019), its author travelled for hours by boat into Si Sawat District to a remote village in the hills. There a 56-year-old Karen man, whom the author calls Phi Ton, spoke about the cannabis the village had grown and used for a long time, and of which some seed still survived. An excerpt was published by Bangkok Biz News in February 2021.

According to him, the Karen of his village grow a local variety called chang phueak (ช้างเผือก, "white elephant"), which they call chong wa in Karen (ช่องวา in the excerpt's Thai script). In his words it is a very large plant, an old variety handed down from his grandparents' generation, which does well in damp and very cold weather. The village also grows foi thong (ฝอยทอง, "golden threads"), a name in Central Thai for which, he said, Karen has no word, and which his grandparents did not have; and kan yao (ก้านยาว, "long stem"), whose flowers form sparsely and carry many seeds.

The Karen of old, he said, sowed cannabis together with their upland rice in the rainy season, around the seventh and eighth months, and used it to keep pests (phlia) off the rice, which otherwise turned red. A rai of rice used to hold 20 to 30 cannabis plants. Once cannabis became illegal, they went on growing it among the rice to protect the crop, but in secret and in far smaller numbers.

He described the method step by step. Once the rice has been dibbled in, 40 to 50 seeds are sown at the site of a burnt bamboo clump beside the field, where the ground is rich, under plastic cups that keep off birds, rats and grasshoppers; they sprout within three days and are later moved out. After about a week the seedlings are sexed: a red stem marks a female nine times in ten and a green stem a male, and the growers also look at the set of the side branches. Only females go into the rice, and the males are pulled out, so the crop sets no seed. A separate plot away from the rice holds both sexes to make seed for the next year. The cannabis is picked once the rice harvest is in, around December. A plant is ready when the seed husks have turned yellow up to the tip of the head, or when the leaves among the flowers have yellowed; a magnifying lens is now also used to look at the resin. Picking runs all day from before dawn, and some say that plants picked in the morning are stronger. Neither the rice nor the cannabis is given fertiliser beyond the ash left from burning the field, though some growers bring bat dung from caves.

The older generation, he said, grew only a few plants, to guard the rice: four or five gave enough flowers to smoke for a whole year, and 20 to 30 plants filled sacks.

The 2018 hilltop field

On 1 October 2018 the district chief of Si Sawat said he had been told of illicit cannabis growing on Khao Bo Lukrang, a hill at Ban Tha Sanun (village 4 of Dan Mae Chalaep subdistrict). He led district officers, a volunteer defence company, soldiers, police of the Dan Mae Chalaep station and local headmen up the hill on foot through bamboo forest. At the summit they found a temporary hut roofed with plastic, holding smoking equipment, cannabis seed and some dried cannabis. Behind it 140 large cannabis plants, 2 to 3 metres tall, had been planted through the surrounding forest. No one was there. The plants were cut down and taken to the Dan Mae Chalaep police, who were to search for the growers.

Accessions

No accessions documented yet.

Recent news

Article	Date	Category	Locality	Plants
News:2018-10-01/Eradication/si-sawat-officials-soldiers-and-police-cut-down-140-cannabis-plants-on-a-hilltop-at-ban-tha-sanun	1 October 2018	Eradication		140

See also

• Kanchanaburi Province
• Karen people
• Lu Thaw
• Sangkhlaburi
• Western Thailand