MAE RIM: Battling drought, debt and ailments blamed on pesticides, rice farmers in northern Thailand have turned to eco-friendly growing methods despite powerful agribusiness interests in a country that is one of the top exporters of the grain in the world.
SRI was invented in the 1980s in Madagascar by a French Jesuit priest, and the technique has spread globally. Traditional Thai rice farmers earn around 3,000 baht a month but Sunnan was able to increase his income by 20 per cent after adopting the SRI method.Rice is a staple in the diet of around three billion people globally.
In Bac Giang province in northern Vietnam, net profits for farmers were as much as 226 per cent higher after adopting the SRI method than when using traditional ones, according to Abha Mishra, who led a large project on behalf of the Asian Institute of Technology. Industry lobbies are very active in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand, one of the largest users of pesticides in the world.With SRI, paddy fields are not permanently flooded, which reduces methane emissions by 60 per cent, according to Tristan Lecomte, founder of Pur Projet, a French company supporting the technique.