Managing Land and Bioresources for Sustainable
Food Production of the Karen Community
in Northern Thailand
The Karen is the largest highland ethnic minorities among the six major groups : Karen, Hmong, Lua, Lisu, Ahka and Lahu. The Karen livelihood is traditionally based on wet rice culture, but when the paddies are not available, the karen will clear forest patches for upland rice farming. Individual households may occupy 3-4 plots of these forest patches with average fallow periods of 3.4 years as found in the Wat Chan study area.
A number of social disturbances that affect the livelibood of the Karen community include :
- Over 60 percent of farm households are rice deficit,
- cash crops introduced and contracted by the Royal project are not always bringing promising return,
- erratic rainfall and breakdown of community water supply affect the planting and production of rainy season rice,
- incidence of forest fire and forest extraction of timber products are increasing, and
- drug addiciton is increasing.
The preliminary farm household appraisal revealed that land holding pattern and its utilization were associated with farmers' designing food security supporting systems i.e. cultivation of paddy rice, decision to grow upland rice in the forest fallow to bridge food gap and extracting forest products for cash.
Three research activities were carried out to improve the food supply of the Karen community in the Wat chan area. These were :
- paddy rice improvement,
- developing alternatives to slash and burn forest-fallow system, and
- domestication of Castanopsis and related species.
Progress
- The Karen has possessed a wide range of rice genetic resources. Thirty-four lines were differentiated enzymatically. Among which 26 lines showed less photosensitive and could produce yield in dry season ranging form 1.0 to 4.3 t/ha. In the lowland environment at the MCC station.
- The 7-year forest fallow could sustain rice yield about 2 t/ha in one year, and yield declined with continued cropping. Imperata grass would emerge as a serious weed after the third year.
- Pigeon pea, intercropped with upland rice showed promising as Imperata suppressor in the forest fallow system.
- Tree stumps in the 4-year fallow could yield sizable fuel wood
- Castanopsis spp. Is a multi-purpose local forest species, and the nuts of at least four species were harvested by local for market.
- One-year old seedlings were sensitive to frost damage when planted on the arable land. Better survival was achieved when planted as under growth in the degraded forest.
(for more information, contact phrek@chiangmai.ac.th)
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