Anyone wants Organic Durians?

Apologies to all who had been kind enough to check on this blog only to discover that there weren’t any new posting. I assure you that I am in the best of health and am still kicking and alive. Was extremely busy upon coming back from Sydney, my two sisters came over with their families, dad too and spent the weekend with us, a two day one night affair and we had a good time talking, eating and well spending time together. Times spent with families in an unhurried manner are something that I treasure and appreciate. The kids had a great time with the dogs and I am sure my dogs had a great time too. It was a break from the monotony of living out here just the two of us without anyone else except the dogs, a nice change to have other voices here. Anyway I had a great time. Soon after the weekend, I had to go about bringing durians out to KL to be sold as the prices offered by the wholesalers here were way below production cost. I had been driving down to KL in the wee hours of the morning, finishing sales by 2-3pm and then back to the durian plantation to help pick, clean and load the next batch of fruits for delivery the following morning. After one full week of doing this, I must say that I am physically drained but I am glad to be able to earn some income. It is not a lot of money but all the same I thank God for the providence.

 

While selling durians I realized that many people are not informed of the dangers of pesticides and herbicides used on the agricultural produce that they buy. I suppose some are conscious of the problem but are ignorant. There is a need to educate the people around us on the importance of knowing what we put into our bodies, the food we eat, the liquid we drink. Trust your mind and not your eyes, please your body and not your tongues. In the case of durians, buy organic. The more expensive that particular clone, the more in demand it generates then rest assured that there is a real possibility of some orchard owners applying more chemicals to increase yields and to make sure that there is minimal rejects. Hence the absence of any worm hole is not a good sign. In our quest to have eye pleasing fruits and vegetables we are driving the average farmer to resort to the use of growth hormones, enzymes, and all sorts of chemicals… safe for eating? Please go ahead, buy the biggest eggplant, the really green spinach, longest cucumber, vegetable with zero defect, as for me I’ll get my stuff from the guy who is planting for his own consumption. If it is safe for the worm to eat then it is safe for me.

 

Back to durians, I had to sell organic, chemical free durians for one third the price that the chemical laced clones commands. Mind you the fruits are of good quality, good taste, aromatic, creamy texture and better than the clones. That is the irony of it, people are prepared to pay more for ‘name’ ... branding than quality… now we have branded durians too! By our warped value systems, we are causing the farmer to chop down their 20-30 year old trees grown from seeds and replacing them with clones bud grafted from one stock. We have weaker strain of trees, shrinking genetic pool, …etc. etc. and one day we will no longer be able to sample a myriad of different taste from all sorts of durians. We will only have D24, D2 and the current rage the famed ‘Maw San Wong’… It is a real problem as I hear of farmers chopping down their good ‘kampung’ durians and replacing them with clone due to the poor prices of the ‘real’ thing. Consequences… consequences.