You know how incredible I think this is.

I do have some questions though. (You already anticipated that didn't you?)

1. Will the living plots for the families have land available to provide food for the families and provide them with food security?
2. Will your Dutch Investor contract which crops are to be grown? Will you have freedom of choice in the crops?

This week there is a huge agricultural fair here at the university. (I am thinking that I heard someplace that this University has the major agricultural college in Thailand.) It is close enough to the apartment and noisy enough that it is driving me nuts! Anyhow, I think I might have mentioned to you a Buddhist Community in Thailand called Asoke. It is a community running on a sufficiency economy. They started raising their own food (vegetarian) and then selling the excess in the local market. They then opened vegetarian restaurants in the locals where they are situated. About the same time as I moved here, a group of about 30 of them were invited to settle on a large piece on University land. I went over yesterday and attended the fair and visited their farm. The community invited people from all of the Asoke communities across Thailand and there are about 500 members here this week. They have gone into dried fruits and vegetables, herbal medicines, SOAP, natural juices (They had passion fruit!) I left with a big bag of organic popcorn and a trade deal that I will teach them English and they will feed me! Today they dropped off a cabbage large enough to feed me for a month. I hope this isn't their idea! :-)

Anyhow, the community as a whole has become so prosperous that they want to send some of their members back to university. There will be some - maybe 6 - who will be starting Masters degrees in a pilot program in development of sufficiency economies. The program is under development but is looking at how the single sufficient family radiates out into the community and globalizes step-by-step.

By the way, they are pretty high tech too. They live in these simple thatched roof buildings or tents but the have a single building that is filled with computers and internet connections!

Hurray, hurray for you!