An elaborate centuries-old royal ritual in Thailand's capital predicts a good year for farmers
The Royal Ploughing Ceremony is held to read auguries that predict the farming conditions for the year ahead. As is usually the case, good times were predicted, even though Thailand 's economy is sluggish.
The King and Queen Suthida were sheltered from the bright sun by ornate umbrellas at the ceremony's traditional venue, Sanam Luang, or 'Royal Ground,' a large field near the Grand Palace in the capital Bangkok.
According to Thai historians, the ritual goes back some 700 years. Then, as now, the cultivation of rice was central to the country's culture and economy, and the ceremony is meant to give encouragement to farmers as the new planting season begins.
The ceremony was led by the highest-ranking civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, serving as the Lord of the Ploughing Ceremony. In a colorful traditional costume, he chose from a selection of cloths, and the one he picked was interpreted to signify satisfactory rainfall and an abundant harvest.
In the ceremony's second stage, he anointed the heads of two 'sacred' oxen, who then pulled a plough around a section of the field several times, as he scattered seeds at the front of a small procession with more traditionally garbed participants.
The two oxen, called 'Por' and 'Piang' — which together mean 'sufficiency' — then chose from a selection of food offered by Brahmin priests. The foods chosen were water, grass and liquor, which symbolize adequate water supplies, abundance of food supplies and what was interpreted as good international trade, respectively.
After the departure of the king and queen, onlookers sprinted onto the field to collect the scattered seeds as souvenirs or to add to their own rice stores at home for a meritorious mix.
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However, an official reintroduction programme begun in 2018 has led to the population growing from little more than three or four pairs to more than 50 – more than had been recorded in the region for more than 300 years. According to Duncan Orr-Ewing, the head of species and land management at the bird charity the RSBP, an English scheme would most likely follow the same model, with the focus likely to be the north of England. In the Scottish scheme, single chicks were taken from broods of two in established populations when they were about six to eight weeks old and then fed remotely with minimal human contact before they were released at specially chosen sites, with food initially provided until they could hunt for themselves. Such a method has also been used in reintroducing red kites and sea eagles, and has tended to work well, Orr-Ewing said, with high survival rates for the southern Scotland golden eagle project. While this depended on there being enough suitable sites containing sufficient prey, in the north of England this is unlikely to be an issue. Orr-Ewing said: 'The main prey of golden eagles are things like grouse, rabbits, hares. But they can also take other things like deer calves, we've seen badgers, fox cubs, all of these sort of things. And you've got grouse moor estates. So I don't think prey availability is going to be a problem.' The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said a reintroduction programme for England would also look at public engagement and would consider the impact on other species and the wider environment. A Defra spokesperson said: 'The recovery of golden eagles offers hope for the future of the species in Britain. Any next steps of their reintroduction in England will be set out in due course.' 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The same conservation project has since also released a species known as the iron age pig, a cross between wild boar and domestic pigs that are similar to the wild pigs that roamed much of Europe thousands of years ago. It has also released longhorn cattle and Exmoor ponies. Red kites Red kites had been common but loss of habitat and egg stealing meant that by the 1980s they had gone from England, with only a few pairs in Wales. In July 1990, two Welsh red kites and 11 from Spain – the chicks were brought in on a British Airways flight – were released in the Chiltern Hills, a process repeated over the next four years, with similar schemes happening in other areas. Red kites are now commonly seen in the Chilterns and there are an estimated 2,000 breeding pairs in England, distributed across almost the whole country.
