Myanmar hills embrace silkworms over poppies

Myanmar hills embrace silkworms over poppies

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Zhou Xing Ci’s family have farmed poppies for as long as anyone remembers, scraping the flowers' sticky brown sap to produce opium.

Along with many other farmers in the hills of eastern Myanmar, the crop – much of which ends up as heroin sold on foreign streets - has in recent years put Myanmar behind only Afghanistan as the world’s leading source of opium.

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
Zhou walks across a small bridge outside his house surrounded by his mulberry farm.

“That tradition stops with me,” Zhou, 42, told Reuters at his sturdy new timber house in Tangyan township, in the north of Shan State.

Zhou is now in his third year raising silkworms rather than poppies, and says quicker profits have enabled his family - with six children - to upgrade from a bamboo hut.

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
Silkworms fed with mulberry leaves.

A Chinese company working with farmers like Zhou hopes the silk-producing larva can help the farmers, and their country, quit the drug.

“Growing opium is too tough. It’s only one harvest every year and a rain can easily destroy a whole year’s work,” said Zhou.

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Slideshow

Children stand outside their houses near mulberry and silkworm farm.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Children stand outside their houses near mulberry and silkworm farm.

Aung Myo Tho, 35, an ethnic Palaung woman, takes care of her baby after a day of work at a mulberry and silkworm farm.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Aung Myo Tho, 35, an ethnic Palaung woman, takes care of her baby after a day of work at a mulberry and silkworm farm.

An  ethnic Palaung woman mills rice after picking leaves to feed silkworms.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

An ethnic Palaung woman mills rice after picking leaves to feed silkworms.

Ethnic Palaung workers collect mulberry leaves to feed silkworms.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Ethnic Palaung workers collect mulberry leaves to feed silkworms.

Ethnic Palaung women and their children collect silkworm cocoons.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Ethnic Palaung women and their children collect silkworm cocoons.

Silkworm cocoons are seen ready for harvest after two weeks of growing.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Silkworm cocoons are seen ready for harvest after two weeks of growing.

A notebook containing the list of farmers that need to receive next round of silkworms from Chinese workers from DH Silco Enterprise.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

A notebook containing the list of farmers that need to receive next round of silkworms from Chinese workers from DH Silco Enterprise.

A farmer arrives at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise to collect a new round of silkworms.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

A farmer arrives at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise to collect a new round of silkworms.

A worker (right) from DH Silco Enterprise delivers a new round of silkworms to farmers.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

A worker (right) from DH Silco Enterprise delivers a new round of silkworms to farmers.

Silkworm cocoons dry at one of the base camps of DH Silco Enterprise.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Silkworm cocoons dry at one of the base camps of DH Silco Enterprise.

A base camp house for a Chinese company DH Silco Enterprise workers is seen at a mulberry farm.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

A base camp house for a Chinese company DH Silco Enterprise workers is seen at a mulberry farm.

Min Min Tun (center), 36, an ethnic Palaung woman, waits with her children as freshly harvested silkworm cocoons are being weighed to be sold to DH Silco Enterprise.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Min Min Tun (center), 36, an ethnic Palaung woman, waits with her children as freshly harvested silkworm cocoons are being weighed to be sold to DH Silco Enterprise.

Shan women react after being paid for selling silkworm cocoons from their first harvest of the year.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Shan women react after being paid for selling silkworm cocoons from their first harvest of the year.

Ethnic Palaung men wait by a truck after loading it with silkworm cocoons.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Ethnic Palaung men wait by a truck after loading it with silkworm cocoons.

A translators for Chinese workers waits for lunch at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

A translators for Chinese workers waits for lunch at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise.

Food lies on a table at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Food lies on a table at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise.

Chinese workers and their translators from DH Silco Enterprise cheer each other for the first harvest of the year of silkworm cocoons at their base camp.
. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang

Chinese workers and their translators from DH Silco Enterprise cheer each other for the first harvest of the year of silkworm cocoons at their base camp.

The price for opium has fallen, he said, and growing poppies risked running afoul of heavy-handed eradication efforts by Myanmar authorities.

The price drop, alongside the rise of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, has contributed to a 25 percent fall in the total area of Myanmar under poppy cultivation since 2015, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
Aung Myo Tho, 35, an ethnic Palaung woman stands outside her house near mulberry and silkworm farm.

The U.N. agency has assisted more than 1,000 farmers to switch from opium to another cash crop, coffee, since 2014, said Troels Vester, UNODC country manager for Myanmar.

Still, 41,000 hectares (101,313 acres) of poppy was planted in Myanmar last year, the agency said. Farmers in conflict areas were less likely to have moved to licit crops, it added.

In the corner of Myanmar where Zhou lives, bordering China's Yunnan province, various armed groups operate and the law is barely enforced, providing a haven for opium traders, as well as heroin producers and meth-lab operators.

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
Farmers receive payment for their first harvest of the year of silkworm cocoons at a base camp of DH Silco Enterprise.

“It was nothing but poppy farms when we first arrived in this area in 2014,” said Wang Bing, 63, vice general manager of DH Silco Enterprise, the Chinese company working with farmers, navigating a winding dirt road in a four-wheel drive.

The company is working with more than 1,800 families, who grow mulberry bushes to feed the silkworms on 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of land, producing at least 288,000 kg of cocoons to be exported to China each year, Wang said.

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
An ethnic Palaung woman holds silkworm cocoons.

About 50 sericulturalists from China help farmers to harvest as often as every two weeks between April and November, said Wang, a Zhejiang province native who's spent more than 40 years in China’s silk trade.

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
Ethnic Palaung workers clean off trays for baby silkworms at a mulberry farm.

Some villagers have moved to lower lying areas to take part. Others are now farming silkworms alongside other crops like watermelons.

But old habits are hard to break.

During Reuters’ last visit in April, Zhou’s children played with poppy-farming tools, and a small plot of poppy stalks grew next to his mulberry bushes. His neighbour was growing a small amount to feed his grandfather’s opium addiction, Zhou said.

. Lashio, Myanmar. Reuters/Ann Wang
A dried poppy in a field next to a mulberry farm.