Thailand’s farmers adapt and respond to climate change
Farmers are pioneering dynamic responses to climate change by allowing nature’s diversity to guide the way
They’re big, round, vibrant green and stacked as far as the eye can see along both sides of the highway. They are also a sign that you have arrived in Nakhon Pathom, famous for juicy, sweet pomelos. But caution: pull over and sink your teeth into the fruit and you’ll know you’ve been deceived. A sharp, tangy jolt awaits the taste buds — a telltale sign these fruits no longer originate from local soil.
Four years ago, this was not the case. But like a flip of a switch, the catastrophic floods of 2011 in Thailand’s Central Plain inundated Nakhon Pathom along with most of its pomelo orchards. Weeks of flooding killed most of the trees, and there were insufficient local saplings to replant.
“The floods nearly rendered extinct our province’s unique pomelo gene pool,” recalls Chutima Noinat of Klong Jinda Sustainable Farming Group, which plays an active role in a last-ditch effort to rescue mature trees for cloning purposes. “Luckily supportive farmers from elsewhere stepped in to help us nurture new saplings from cuttings. This takes time, however, so we’re still a long way away from replacing what was lost.”
Learning from the disaster, farmers are becoming proactive. In this era of changing weather patterns, farmers recognise it’s up to them to think about and prepare for the future, says Vitoon Panyakul, director of Green Net, a social enterprise promoting sustainable farming and community-led climate change responses.
“The genetic conservation of these resources is vital for farmers’ livelihoods and the local economy, but the government has demonstrated little interest in preserving these assets,” states Vitoon.
Indeed, Thai climate modelling warns that throughout much of the country farmers should prepare for larger storms, more rainfall and longer, hotter summers. Growers in Nakhon Pathom already bear witness to the impact of erratic weather conditions.
“Some important pollinating insects seem to have disappeared coincident with the arrival of prolonged summers,” says Ubon Sriratanapitak, who cultivates 12 rai of organic limes and vegetables in Klong Jinda. “Strong winds that could flatten any exposed orchards also materialise more frequently.” Establishing a local seed bank is a critical preparedness measure, stresses Chutima. With support from Green Net and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, Chutima initially reached out to Ubon Ratchathani and dozens of farmers and teachers in Klong Jinda.
Over the past two years, they’ve innovated a type of gene bank that also stores indigenous knowledge on how to get the most from the seed pool in their expanding collections.
“We have no temperature controlled freezer as commonly found in many seed banks because we rotate our seeds annually,” Chutima adds. “The idea is to keep the seeds fresh and alive in the planting cycle of constant changing climate. This way we keep quality consistency in check while making the bank easier to manage without the aide of expensive technology. We also distribute our collection to farmers in our network elsewhere in the country for planting to provide a secondary safety net.”
Vitoon of Green Net adds that many other farming communities too are becoming future driven, recognising the need to adapt farming methods in response to increasingly uncertain climate conditions. For example, rice farmers in Chachoengsao who export high quality organic rice to Europe under Green Net’s fair trade operation are in the process of adapting to late-arriving rains by reviving drought-resistant indigenous rice varieties using a technique once widely practised in the drier climate of Isan.
“Instead of sowing rice seeds or transplanting seedlings as commonly done in rain-fed or irrigated areas, we bury the seeds deep enough for moisture to keep the seeds alive for nearly a month without rainfall,” says Kamphan Suprom, a farmer who remembers and adapts the technique from when she was a child growing up in Si Sa Ket.
To test various adaptation strategies, four years ago member farmers of Sanamchaikhet Organic Farming Group in Chachoengsao province established several experimental rice fields.
So far, they have learned that varieties that work well under such planting techniques tended to be those of harder texture when cooked, thus less popular with consumers.
“If this is what nature allows, we may be forced to be more innovative with our rice,” says Phupetch Srileung-orn, the farming group technical support co-ordinator. “We are in discussion with a local pasta factory to make rice pasta from our organic hard rice for export.”
What Klong Jinda and Sanamchaikhet farmers have in common is that their commitment to adapt with climate change has stimulated a dedication to understanding and protecting their genetic resources and food quality.
“And equally important, farmers now recognise that they are just at the beginning of what must be an ongoing, dynamic adaptation process to new climate conditions, because we just don’t know what may lie ahead,” says Vitoon.