Topographic Map: Crop Land Use

Where is the lowest area; what color is it? What is grown at the middle and highest elevations? Click on the photo to see the actual scene on the ground.

Answers: 1) lowest areas are shown in green, where rice is grown 2) middle elevations are covered with coconut trees 3) highest elevations have gardens with spices and vegetables

The topographic map shows coconut groves in Jamaica. Coconuts and Monkeys in Thailand In some Thai villages up to 10% of the land is devoted to growing coconut trees, which are harvested every month and produce up to 70 nuts a year. A workforce of several thousand monkeys in southern Thailand help pick the country's crop of about 1.5m tonnes of coconuts. Villages often have at least one monkey per household and the animal is rented out to a local plantation at a modest fee. According to Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel, an anthropologist who has studied the coconut-picking monkeys, a well-trained animal changes hands for up to $400. That is a bargain for a plantation owner who spends just $12 a month on "monkey wages" of eggs, rice and fruit. Monkeys have been used for decades by humans to work in Thai agriculture to pick coconuts and fruit, but their number is growing. As the monkeys' forest habitat disappears, they are becoming easier to capture and to put to work. They are trapped young; sometimes hunters shoot a mother to pry the young one from her. The monkeys are then taught at least six different commands and how to pick coconuts according to how ripe they are. The training lasts from two weeks to a few months, and can be harsh: the monkeys learn by being punished for bad behavior and rewarded for good. However, once employed, life improves. Working monkeys are given names, groomed, bathed and fed three times a day. Monkeys do not work when they are ill, and when they grow old they are either released back into the forest, or kept as pets; the monkey equivalents of sick leave and retirement benefits. Are the monkeys being exploited? They have not yet organized themselves into a trade union. There have been murmurs of disapproval in America for the way the monkeys are trained and the fact that they are constantly kept on leashes and do not breed. But in general, the monkeys are treated well. [Source: The Economist, 13 December 1997, p. 57.]

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 1 February 1996; last revised on 07 March 2005.