It seems to me that Thailand is ideally situated to develop sustainable, productive and profitable natural farming. The soils and climate are favourable and there is abundant water, delivered through an extensive, well-maintained infrastructure.
The Thai king’s agricultural innovations and vision – as spelled out in his New Theory farming system – are further incentive for people to adopt ecological farming. His recommendations for the ideal farm include a mix of aquaculture, agroforestry, livestock and rice cultivation, which is an extremely sound plan for secure and sustainable farming. This is such a contrast to the advice given by some government agencies, in Australia for example, who have advised farmers to extend their massive monocultures: ‘get big or get out’ being the future vision for farming in the west.
At a recent farmers’ field day sponsored by the local government of Dorn Tarn village near Fair Earth Farm, I saw excellent products, literature and support for farmers wishing to apply biological techniques for pest and disease control and developing soil fertility. Predatory insects were available for many of the major pests of commercial crops. There were practical demonstrations of growing green manure. The only things noticeably absent were the sales representatives and promotions of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
Yet with so much in favour of natural farming in Thailand, organic farmers are still in the vast minority, and one wonders why. What are the impediments to the spread of these practices? We asked professor Somchai Ongprasert of Mae Jo University for his opinion. He first qualified his response by admitting to not having done any formal research on the subject, but he was happy to offer his opinion. He thought the main reason was the economic difficulty of getting through the transition period from chemical agriculture to organic farming.
The conversion of a rice field to an organic system can be relatively simple and quick, but the farmer must be able to absorb some degree of loss in production for the first few years, since it can take several seasons to recover soil fertility. If we consider aquaculture and agroforestry, the necessary ponds and infrastructure can be expensive and tree crops will not return a yield for at least several years. Given that many farmers are already locked in a cycle of debt resulting from industrial farming methods, the financial problems posed by the conversion process can be risky or even prohibitive.
Perhaps more farmers could be enticed to take these risks if they could be assured better prices for organic produce, but the market here is still quite undeveloped. This is where pilot programs like our community agriculture scheme can play a vital role.
The other challenge identified by Prof. Somchai is knowledge: how does a farmer go about implementing these practices? What exactly are the practices of organic, natural or sustainable farming? A close and realistic examination reveals that although some things are universally true, techniques and species are specific to site and region. Once these techniques have been established, the question then becomes how farmers can learn about them. With surprising candour, the professor suggested that it is very difficult for government and academic agencies to fill this role. Academics and bureaucracies tend by nature to be specialists in their field, and what is needed here is a multidisciplinary approach, where the practitioner knows something about everything, rather than everything about something. He suggested that government agencies could learn from ‘folk scholars.’
Diversity is essential in natural farming, and the key is not the number of diverse elements in a system but the useful connections that can be made between those elements. This is the main focus of permaculture. It is not so much about techniques, but rather about methods of design which create the opportunities, through placement and management, to make beneficial links between the elements of a system.
Prof. Somchai believes that on-farm workshops with successful local farmers like Kru Patum are the best way to pass on useful knowledge. They are inexpensive and assist in the networking process as well as facilitating a two way flow of ideas and information. Perhaps the most useful role that governments can play in support natural farming is to help organise and fund these workshops, and establish financial systems which help farmers get through the financially difficult transition period.
Even with these systems in place, it is still a challenging and risky business for a chemical-dependent farmer to convert to organic methods. But the most important time for action is before a situation becomes critical, so there is all the more reason for urgency now. If we wait for the complete exhaustion of soils and ecosystems, or for peak oil or economic crisis, it could be too late. Bill Mollison, the founder of permaculture, once complained how farmers would wait until they had exhausted their soils, were facing crippling debt and were in the middle of a terrible drought to call him in, and then ask, ‘What can you do for me?’
Prof. Somchai recalled a Thai idiom to stress what is called for in the future of farming: jai gla hua wai, or ‘brave heart, quick mind.’
Nice!