Smoky haze clings to villages in northern Thailand during the dry season between January and
April, when the monsoon rain stops and garbage burning begins. People here burn everything
that needs disposing, from plastic bags to rice straw left over from harvest. Burning is the
cheapest and fastest way to remove trash in the largely rural region without infrastructure and to
prepare fields for planting when the rains return. Most people in the region are subsistence rice
farmers who have been burning their trash and fields for at least 100 years.