AS PRICES FALL, FARMERS TURN TO ILLEGAL CASH CROPS

FRESNO -- On the edge of suburbia here, where farmland awaits the
developer's plow, the magnificent gardens of Southeast Asian refugees
rise and fall.

On leased ground no bigger than 5 or 10 acres -- small potatoes to the
giant industrial growers -- the refugees plant their own longshot
dreams: Chinese bitter melon, Chinese broccoli, Thai chili, ong choy,
su choy, daikon and kohlrabi.

The best strawberries in the San Joaquin Valley are grown by a tribe
of CIA-trained commandos who fled the highlands of Laos after the
Vietnam War. Thai eggplant, slightly spicier than its Armenian cousin,
is the specialty of the lowland Lao.

This spring, anticipating another harvest of low prices in the
nation's most productive farm belt, some Southeast Asian niche farmers
are planting a new cash crop under the brutal sun: marijuana.

In the past month, Fresno County investigators have busted a
half-dozen marijuana fields hidden by borders of cherry tomatoes. A
more ideal camouflage crop -- the tomato and the pot plant have
similar leaves -- would be hard to find. Nearly 40,000 squat but
prolific bushes have been yanked out and set ablaze, an illicit
harvest worth $40 million on the streets -- more than last year's
value for cherries or Valencia oranges or sweet corn in Fresno County.

Five lowland Lao refugees have been arrested and charged with
cultivating marijuana for sale. The record heat of spring has not only
pushed the vineyards and fruit orchards several weeks ahead of their
growing cycles but matured the marijuana in half the time.

"This is the earliest in my 23 years as a narc that we've taken off so
many marijuana plots," said Lt. Rick Hill of the Fresno County
Sheriff's Department. "Usually, the plots we find are in the
mountains, and they're mostly operated by gangs from Mexico. These new
plots are down on the valley floor, and it's Southeast Asians who are
growing them."

The tips, meanwhile, keep coming in. Last week, sheriff's deputies
found 13 pounds of processed marijuana, $37,000 in cash and
night-vision equipment in a house belonging to a lowland Lao. A
storage facility rented by the same man produced two rifles, two
handguns and 40 pounds of processed marijuana.

"It's hard to tell if it's one big operation or several smaller ones,"
Hill said. "I'm afraid we're on the front end of a trend."

As sheriff's deputies canvass the truck farms of Fresno County looking
for greener-than-green plants, Southeast Asian leaders are complaining
that their community is being unfairly singled out. In one news
release, the Sheriff's Department advised landowners leasing property
to Southeast Asian farmers to eyeball the rows for cannabis.

The refugees counter that the vast majority of their truck farms are
clean and that authorities, by targeting Southeast Asian farms, are
making it difficult for future refugees to lease farmland.

"Anyone who reads the local paper has the conception that Southeast
Asian farmers grow marijuana," said Tzexa Cherta Lee, a leading Hmong
grower and packer in Fresno County. "Someone even asked me the other
day if the white caps we put over the plants to protect them from
frost is the Southeast Asian way of hiding the marijuana."

The busts find lowland and highland Lao pointing a finger at each
other.

So far, the illicit plots have belonged to lowland Lao farmers, though
sheriff's deputies recall that Hmong growers were involved in a spate
of similar busts in the mid-1990s. As the Hmong do their best to
distance themselves from the new wave of plantings, distrust between
the two ethnic groups has grown.

"If they want to talk about the Lao and their pot farms, then we can
talk about the Hmong and their opium poppies," said Pooh Phanthadeth,
33, a Laotian grower tending to a vegetable field on the outskirts of
Fresno.

"The Hmong harvest opium right in their backyards, and everyone thinks
they're just California poppies decorating the ground."

If each group of neighbors seems eager to throw a little dirt on the
other, the reasons might be traced to an especially difficult path to
acceptance here.

The Hmong, a tribe of 18 clans from the Laotian highlands, were
slash-and-burn farmers who lived in jungle huts until the CIA
recruited them to fight communist forces during the Vietnam War. After
suffering high combat mortality rates, the Hmong began resettling in
Central California by the tens of thousands in the late 1970s.

For years, tales of their cultural clash, apocryphal and otherwise,
have embroidered the narrative of the San Joaquin Valley. Much to
their dismay, their stubborn clinging to old ways has become fodder
for headlines.

The traditional Hmong funeral, for instance, is a three-day affair,
with elders slaughtering a cow on chapel grounds and burning paper
money -- enough in at least one case to set a funeral home on fire.
When Hmong become sick, the first call generally goes to a shaman who
may opt to sacrifice a live animal to chase away evil spirits. Some
Hmong marry brides as young as 11 and practice polygamy.

By contrast, the lowland Lao, city dwellers back home, have had a
somewhat easier time crossing the cultural divide. But this hasn't led
to economic gain, at least not for the majority.

Twenty-five years after resettlement, both the Hmong and lowland Lao
communities still rely heavily on government assistance. While more
than half of the second-generation Southeast Asians have gone on to
college or well-paying careers here, social workers say, an additional
40% flounder in dead-end jobs or a cycle of gangs and welfare dependency.

"Even though the Hmong started out more culturally backward, they've
had a greater number of success stories than us," said Steve
Arounsack, a lowland Lao refugee studying for his doctorate in ecology
at UC Davis.

"Because of the Hmong's tight-knit clan structure, there's a certain
amount of cohesion that the lowland Lao don't have. If a Hmong takes
the wrong turn, they pay a price inside the clan."

For many unskilled refugees who speak no English, the truck farm
represents the best shot at escaping poverty. Making the fringe of
Fresno bloom, though, is no easy go. The labor is long, and everyone
in the family must pitch in. Even barefoot grandmothers in straw hats
and rolled-up jeans stand in the muddy irrigation water to plant the
rows.

They say with pride that no boss looks over their shoulder when they
trudge to the wooden tent in the middle of the field to eat noodles
and spicy beef. But at the end of the day, the buyer's prices are low
and they struggle to cover the rent. Just when they think they have
mastered the vagaries of soil and climate, it seems, the landowner
sells out to a developer. Refugees hop from field to field, tent to
tent.

For the uninitiated, the vegetables grown by Southeast Asians can be
confounding. The farmers walk into the county agricultural
commissioner's office and confront officials with leafy greens and
tubers they have never seen before. They must consult with books to
confirm that a Napa cabbage look-alike is su choy or an arrow-leafed
water spinach is ong choy.

Each year, the production value of Asian vegetables increases
slightly. Last year, farms totaling 1,470 acres produced $10.3 million
- -- just a sliver of the $4 billion in crops grown by Fresno County.

"For the most part, these guys are legitimate small farmers. Now a
handful lured by the big bucks have stepped over the line," said
Dennis Plann, the county's deputy agricultural commissioner. "I have
some concerns about my staff going out to certify a grower and
stumbling on a bunch of this marijuana. It could get dangerous."

Fresno sheriff's officials agree that only a fraction of Southeast
Asian truck farmers are involved in marijuana cultivation, and they
have apologized to the refugees for public comments that suggest they
are targets. But they warn that the illegal operations and all that
they entail -- such as the use of rifles and night-vision gear -- can
pose dangers.

Like the vegetables, the marijuana they raise is an unusual breed.
Nurtured indoors and conditioned to grow no more than 3 feet tall, the
bushy-leafed crop is easy to hide once transplanted. This season's
first surveillance took narcotics officers to a Southeast Asian
vegetable farm that stretched out over 40 acres, far bigger than most.

"About 25 acres were cropped, and 15 acres were being used for
marijuana," Hill said. "I had farmers who walked their dogs every day
along that property and all they saw was tomatoes."

Two men and a woman who spoke little English were arrested and charged
with cultivating 12,000 illicit plants. As more tips flowed in, a
half-dozen other busts came in quick succession.

The news took Hao Khounmeuang, 30, and her family by surprise. She
says she has never seen a marijuana plant growing in any field, Lao or
otherwise. But she concedes she may have been too busy to notice.

By day, she works in the field alongside her brother and her husband,
Pooh Phanthadeth. By night, she helps build surveillance cameras at
the Pelco plant in nearby Clovis. During tax season, she puts her
accounting skills to work and moonlights at H&R Block.

"You can't make it as a small farmer unless you have an outside job,"
she said.

Last year, after moving from one small plot to another in search of
better soil, she and her husband bought a 20-acre vineyard in
southeast Fresno for $200,000.

They promptly tore out eight acres of Thompson seedless grapes that
had lost their market due to a raisin glut and planted squash,
peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and three varieties of eggplant.

"This basil right here is extravagant with fish," Phanthadeth said as
he walked the rows. "Over there, we're planting Chinese eggplant. When
it gets hot, the mites start attacking the eggplant with extreme prejudice.

"As you can see," he said with a grin, "no marijuana."

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CASH CROPS

Fresno County authorities recently destroyed marijuana plants worth
$40 million. This exceeds the value of many legal crops grown in the
county last year.

Fresno County's top 5 crops...

(In millions)

Grapes $401

Tomatoes $384

Cotton $342

Cattle and calves $264

Poultry $247

Marijuana discovered this spring $40*

and other Fresno County crops

Cherries $33

Valencia oranges $32

Sweet corn $30

Pistachios $14

Asian vegetables $10

*Figures are 2003 totals, except marijuana.

Sources: Fresno County Agricultural Commission; Fresno County Sheriff's
Department