It’s harvest time in Thailand. I’ve recently returned from a few days in Chiang Rai and Phayao photographing the rice harvest for a client. Alas, for two out of three days the weather was dreadful with white skies and rain. Most unseasonal.

I met up with a few of the farmers I had photographed a few months ago during the planting and also some new groups. This included a lovely bunch of extremely cheerful Lisu hill tribe ladies who were cuting the rice dressed up in their colourful outfits.

Although much of the mian harvest of kao homali or jasmine rice is harvested by machines these days, the villagers cut their own crop of sticky rice by hand. It usually a community effort.

I’m off to Yangon tomorrow for the launch party of my recent book, Enchanting Myanmar and am looking forward to seeing how much has changed since my last visit a year ago.

In Myanmar, the staple diet is rice; a grain has shaped the landscape of the Irrawaddy Delta. Paddy cultivation is still predominately organic and not mechanized.

From the ploughing, broadcasting of seed, the replanting of nursery seedlings, to harvest and threshing, all the work is done without the use of machines. It was also been stated that rice production generates a direct or indirect income for many as 75 percent of the population. Prior to World War II, Myanmar was the world’s largest rice producer and even today after years of economic and political isolation it is still in the top ten.

During my recent visit, it was harvest time. While traveling across country I stopped off at a few fields to photograph the harvest and the winnowing of rice. The whole process is backbreaking work done under the glare of a hot sun.

I have nothing but admiration for the farmers grafting for little more than a subsistence lifestyle.