Still, unless global heating is curbed, life is only going to get more challenging for Thai farmers and their counterparts across southeast Asia, says Dr Witsanu Attavanich, an environmental economist at Kasetsart University in Bangkok.
“These heat waves will get worse… [and] it is expected that Thailand’s agricultural sector will suffer more damage in the future,” he says, adding that the farmers he’s surveyed have already seen rice yields drop by 30 to 50 per cent. This is not the only affected crop.
“The yield of aromatic coconuts has decreased due to extreme heat,” says Dr Attavanich. “Farmers who grow durian, the high value crop, also struggle with the shortage of water.”
According to an upcoming study by Dr Attavanich, Dr Jithitikulchai and their colleagues, overall agricultural production in Thailand could drop by 10 per cent for every one percentage point rise above average annual temperatures.
The paper, set to be published in the journal Climatic Change but seen by the Telegraph, calls for farmers to start diversifying their crops to protect against the impacts of extreme heat. But as it stands, single crop agriculture is actually increasing in Thailand, while the proportion of irrigated farms dropped from 25 per cent in 2007-2016, to 19 per cent in 2020.
“It does not look very promising,” says Dr Jithitikulchai. “These trends suggest a potential shift towards less sustainable agricultural practices… we need a more sustainable future.”
