People, Food and Land Lessons from the Lahu highlands

A Myanmar Commentary by TNI1

Land is integral to Lahu society and sustainable economy. Through food provisioning, many Lahu communities maintain deep connections with the land and social bonds with each other. They may not call themselves environmentalists, yet their ways of life offer key lessons for global struggles towards climate justice.

Lahu villagers wrap pork meat in banana leaves in preparation for New Year celebrations

Photo credit: Kyar Ui

Lahu villagers wrap pork meat in banana leaves in preparation for New Year celebrations

It is late afternoon, an hour or two before daylight fades into twilight. A young Lahu woman picks up firewood and places it in a basket. Rising to her feet, she feels a hint of a chill in the air, for it is December after all. She is used to having to dress warmer to deal with the cold inside the house, and so are her mother and father. But it is her baby brother that she fears for. Thus she bends down to fetch more firewood, just in case.

Inside the house, the young woman’s mother is cleaning grains of rice with water. After such a hard day of work in the poppy field, she decides to add another bowl of rice to the pot. Following her husband’s advice, she lets go of her worry about how much rice they will have left by the time New Year comes around. Merely weeks away, the Lahu New Year celebration never fails to excite her, but a little part of her dreads the upcoming hours of making rice cakes to serve as gifts for visitors. Yet, perhaps that is a small price to pay for seven days of communal gathering, dancing and feasting.

Meanwhile, the family’s father takes the basket of firewood from their daughter and squats down to start the fire. The young woman sits down near her baby brother’s crib as she begins to prepare the other ingredients for tonight’s dinner. Once the rice is well cooked, the father sets it aside, making room for other pots to cook vegetables, onion, garlic, chilli paste, and to the mother’s delight – a small amount of red meat shared with them by a hunting party who returned a couple of days prior.

As the family gathers around the fire with their hungry bellies, the mother gives the dishes a quick taste. As a final touch she adds a little bit of salt, and an indulgent amount of ajinomoto (MSG) – and dinner is served.2

The lives of Lahu people in Myanmar

The story helps to illustrate the Lahu way of life. Spread across parts of Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and China, the Lahu people are known for their close relationship with nature, for their affinity with mountainous living, and for their fondness of hunting. 

In Myanmar’s eastern Shan State, there are still many Lahu communities making a life far away from towns, markets or even roads. Many of them maintain their deep connections with the land, as well as social bonds with each other. These connections are very much present in Lahu ways of food provisioning, making every Lahu meal a window onto the Lahu way of life.

In a region choked by land grabbing, large-scale mining and agro-business, could the Lahu way of life be a model for a more sustainable and egalitarian way of living on this planet? What lessons can it offer for navigating food insecurity, ecological collapse and climate change – big problems we all face today?

The cycle of food crop cultivation

In April each year begins the annual cultivation cycle for food crops in Lahu villages across eastern Shan State. Villagers work together to clear and plough the land to make it ready for seed planting in May. This is the moment when each household makes use of the seeds that they have carefully saved and stored over the past year. Seed-saving and planting are typically done by women, whilst able-bodied men usually take up more physically demanding jobs such as fence-making necessary to keep animals off the fields. 

Rice, a staple food in Lahu culture, is planted every year, along with other food crops, including but not limited to chilli (a must in every Lahu home), mustard leaf, maize, potatoes and other long-shelf-life vegetables, ginger, garlic, various kinds of beans, and many others. Plant-based ingredients such as these are key in Lahu cuisine. Typical Lahu dishes always contain cooked white rice, sometimes paired with vegetable curry, yam or potatoes, dried vegetables, seasonal fresh vegetables, and dried chilli. Fish or meat is eaten on some days when they are available, and pork especially is often reserved for special occasions.

For centuries, the Lahu peoples have practised upland shifting cultivation (especially of rice). As its name suggests, shifting cultivation – as practised by the Lahu and millions of rural villagers globally – involves periodical shifts in the types of crops planted, as well as in the locations where planting takes place. In the same plot, farmers may plant rice in the first year, corn in the second, soybeans or other crops in the following years, until it is time to clear and/or burn off any plant remains and fallow the land. In the Lahu agriculture system, fallow lands are not idle lands. Fallowing land enables soil to rest and recover and nutrients and water to be restored. While this is happening, the farmers can begin anew the cultivating cycle in other plots that had been previously fallowed. The same farmer or another will later return to the original plot, now rich in minerals and nutrients regenerated after several years of lying fallow. 

“Shifting cultivation is the mother of agriculture,” as one Lahu man puts it. Rightly so, shifting cultivation was a technical innovation that for the first time allowed agricultural food production to lead to abundance while remaining sustainable at the same time. Often residing in remote mountainous geographies, some Lahu villages maintain shifting cultivation to feed themselves, relying on one planting cycle per year, with just organic weeding techniques, and using very little to no fertilizer. The rainy months of June, July and August bless the land with water needed by the crops, which reach maturity and are ready to harvest in October or November.

The Lahu take their harvesting rituals seriously. Harvest time is a busy period, soon followed by festivities during which villagers gather, share the results of their harvests with one another, and eat together. This is also the moment when one special, highly valued item is commonly distributed and gifted: opium. 

Opium as a safety net, and more

Traditional Lahu communities have one cycle of food crop cultivation each year. But not all Lahu food comes from the soil. In the illustrative scene above, Lahu people fulfil their cravings for meat through hunting or fishing trips. Some of them raise livestock (mainly pigs) and poultry too. Foraging and making use of forest resources are also common, for instance to obtain firewood or medicine. 

Similar to other cultures around the globe, the Lahu – particularly Lahu women – have food preservation techniques. These include vegetable drying methods, as well as the making of chilli paste, which is used either as a cooking ingredient or condiment. Some methods have been lost to time and the advancement of technology, but our Lahu source could still recall the methods of previous generations. “My mom had her way of salting pork meat so that it could stay fresh for one week, but I don’t remember how,” he reminisced. “When a pig is slaughtered, we can also keep the lard for cooking for about a year,” reducing the need to purchase cooking oil.

When they are able to practise these food production and processing traditions, Lahu communities are remarkably self-sufficient. This holds especially true in Lahu villages where social bonds remain strong, and resources are more regularly shared with one another. But there are some ingredients that even some of the most remote Lahu villagers still need and therefore have to purchase outside, notably salt and ajinomoto. 

This is where opium comes in. Other than its use as medicine and as a recreational substance, opium is a key source of cash for Lahu communities – remote or otherwise. 

Even for Lahu communities who still grow, hunt or fish most of the food they consume, opium serves as a safety net in case of crop failures. This year, for example, some Lahu villages have lost their crops because of landslides, weather abnormalities and pests. Such disruptions have become more common in the past decade or so, undoubtedly due to wider climatic changes. 

Unlike conventional food crops, the season for growing opium (which can be counted as ‘food’ as well, thanks to its edible leaves and seeds) is between September and January. It takes about three months for opium plants to mature. This is why the Lahu household depicted above is busy in December, as farmers need to manually weed out unwanted plants around their poppies. This method is different from some other opium cultivation areas, where more often herbicides are used along with pesticides and other inorganic material. In fact, Lahu opium – and other crops – traditionally does not rely on fertilizer and irrigation, and this is why, “Lahu opium is of higher quality, and its price is much higher than other types,” commented our Lahu source.

In addition to helping communities cope with crises, opium brings in cash reserves to deal with extra expenses during special occasions. The seven-day Lahu New Year celebration in January, which the mother in our illustrative family above welcomes and dreads at the same time, is one of the rare moments of lavishness in rural Lahu society – along with Lahu weddings and funerals. On top of rice cakes, each household prepares roughly two kilograms of pork meat and other food items to offer as gifts for visitors during New Year festivities. Rice cakes and raw pork meat wrapped in banana leaves are also presented during a ceremony in which young people wash the hands of older people, who in turn give blessings to the young. 

While some households raise and slaughter their own pigs for the New Year, others – especially those living closer to towns and markets – purchase them. The same goes for rice. As explained by our Lahu source, “many people spend a lot of money for the New Year. We need to buy extra rice, other types of food, and sometimes beer… The wealthier the household, the more they can buy.”

Simply put, opium enables Lahu communities to obtain goods that they cannot produce themselves. Lahu communities trade for basic items like salt, ajinomoto, and in some cases batteries for flashlights, tobacco, cooking oil and other daily supplies. Additionally, Lahu communities trade with other communities to acquire specialities such as the rice whisky (customarily used in marriage proposals) brewed by Akha and Shan communities. 

Opium is so highly valued in Lahu society that it is typically presented to teachers as a token of appreciation, and to assist with travel expenses. Meanwhile, one Lahu woman from Thailand said, “here in Thailand, the royal family and the government provide us with everything – alternative livelihood support, road, electricity, water supply, school and clinic. However, as Lahu people, we still need to grow opium. We grow opium, not for income, but for our traditional and cultural use. Opium is part of our Lahu way of life, our belief and our religion.”

The sharing of meat, and other things

If opium cultivation is what enables the Lahu to deal with extra costs incurred in times of crisis and celebration, it is hunting and livestock raising that give the Lahu access to one of their favourite ingredients: pork meat. An iconic Lahu dish served during festive occasions, or when receiving guests, is pork spiced with chilli and a particular type of tree bark (typically found in the forest), wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed until cooked.

When it comes to sourcing meat, women are said to specialise more in fishing whilst men go hunting. Men who own hunting dogs organise occasional hunting trips. Each hunting trip typically lasts for three to four days, supported by very simple food packed from home such as rice and salt. The Lahu hunt almost all kinds of animals they can find in the forest, such as pigs, deer, squirrels, birds and monkeys.

In customary Lahu villages, much of the result of a hunt is shared with as many people as possible. In areas closer to towns, hunted animals are mostly sold at markets. As a prize, the hunter normally gets the head and the skin of the animal. The best meat, which in many cases is the spine, is given to the village head’s household. The rest is shared with everybody – including the hunting dogs, for they make up an essential part of the job. The blood and organs of the animals are also used collectively in one way or another.

Lahu man with bow and arrow used for hunting

Photo credit: Aik Long

/ Lahu man with bow and arrow used for hunting

When someone slaughters a pig they have been raising (usually for eight or nine months), the meat is shared with other villagers. Sharing is a recurring theme in Lahu culture. Sharing produce during harvest time makes it possible for Lahu households to complement one another, as each may plant different crops each year. But Lahu villagers share labour, tasks and time too. Individuals from one household can offer their labour to other households and to tend their farms or carry out other chores. As pointed out by our Lahu source, “when someone is going down to the nearest town, other villagers may ask them to purchase some things that they need as well.” Another example is the task of collecting water, which is shared amongst household members.

It is common for relatives and friends of newlyweds to volunteer their time and energy to help the couple build a house. For the newly-married couple, this is an additional contribution to what they receive from their respective families – mostly small plots of land for farming and livestock raising. Meanwhile, within a household it is customary for a husband to take on more caretaking roles once his wife gets pregnant, well until she recovers from childbirth. First, he must raise chickens initially to provide eggs (for the pregnant mother), and later on after childbirth as an ingredient for chicken broth made with spices such as ginger and pepper.

“The new mother eats a lot of chicken in a matter of weeks, so much so that she wouldn’t feel like eating chicken for a while,” remarked our Lahu source. In addition to food provision, the husband – sometimes helped and/or instructed by the mother-in-law – must ensure the availability of heat sources at all times for both the mother and the baby, including a warm compress and fire inside the house. Traditionally, he is expected to stick around the house for around 12 to 30 days, making sure that his wife and newly born are well nourished and cared for.

Nevertheless, “the culture of sharing is disappearing in villages that are closer to towns,” said our Lahu source, as we discussed the impacts of disappearing Lahu traditions. Shifting cultivators are labelled as polluters, whilst facing a mounting challenge of having to work with less and less land, and more pressure to produce, thereby leaving too little time for fallow periods. Much of their fallow lands are often seen as ‘degraded forest’ or ‘vacant land’ quickly grabbed for more ‘productive’ purposes, such as large-scale agriculture, logging or mining. There are less animals in the forests, less fish in the rivers. People may have access to a wider array of goods and services, but “they seem to have more stress, more work… more inequality.”

Lahu identities are as diverse as many other minority identities in Myanmar and worldwide. Migration, conflict, displacement, dispossession and other reasons may compel certain Lahu communities (or households within communities) to adapt in order to survive. In so doing, they drift away from traditional and agroecological practices of food and care provisioning. 

Sustainability as an enduring survival strategy

In many customary Lahu villages in Myanmar, electricity and gasoline is not readily available. Residing in such a village, the Lahu household illustrated in the beginning of this piece relies on firewood as fuel. Firewood is made of certain types of tree branches, which are cut periodically from household plots or from the local communal forest. When one chops firewood, they cut only a branch or two, enough for their needs.

The communal forest is unlike two other types of forests on Lahu customary land: the cemetery and the sacred forest. The cemetery forest is reserved only to bury the dead. No one is allowed to take or cut anything there, except when they need additional space for burials. The sacred forest, on the other hand, is totally off-limits when it comes to extraction. Villagers have household plots as well as upland or shifting cultivation areas to grow food, hunt or fish in communal forests or rivers, and as a result  people can feed themselves “depending on what’s available.”

The phrase “depending on what’s available” came up many times during conversation on the traditional Lahu way of life. It may sound restrictive, but living and reproducing “depending on what’s available” is key in understanding agroecology and sustainability in the Lahu context. Those who retain Lahu land traditions are said to display more satisfaction in life than their more urbanised counterparts, even though they seem to have less options when it comes to what they consume. They may have simpler ways, lower ‘productivity’, and fewer possessions. But their lives are certainly not sparse when it comes to meaning, values and relationships.

This is why, within Lahu customary land management practices, environmentalism is not a singular thing. Agroecology cannot be separated from communal welfare. No one can say which one is more important: the culture of sharing, proper fallow periods, respecting the sacred forest, or any other norm or value that goes beyond the scope of this commentary. 

The holistic nature of Lahu customary land practice – though not without its challenges – raises interesting and important questions that could help enrich contemporary discussions on agriculture and sustainability. In light of the climate crisis, what do we really need to thrive? Are our material needs greater than our social needs? And, most importantly, how much is enough?

Further reading

Ethnic Community Development Forum (2016). Our Customary Lands: Community-Based Sustainable Natural Resource Management in Burma. https://www.tni.org/files/article-downloads/our_customary_land_-_eng.pdf 

Franco, J. & Borras, J. (2021). The 5Rs in Myanmar Five principles for a future federal democratic system where rural working people can flourish. Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/en/publication/the-5rs-in-myanmar

Franco, J., Twomey, H. & Vervest, P. (2016). The Meaning of Land in Myanmar: A primer. Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/en/publication/the-meaning-of-land-in-myanmar 

Land in Our Hands (2022). Position Paper on the Rights to Customary Land and Practice Systems in Myanmar. https://lioh.org/position-paper-on-customary-land-systems/ 

Springate-Baginsky, O. (2018). Decriminalise agro-forestry! A primer on shifting cultivation in Myanmar. Transnational Institute. https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/tni_p_shifting_cultivation_220518_online.pdf