Implementation Organization : Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)
Country : Thailand
Project Area : Freshwater use for Rice Cultivation
NetRes : TEI
Duration of Project : 18 months
Status : Ongoing
Summary
Although there is no ‘physical scarcity’ of water in the central Thailand, but, due to the rising global concern to ‘grow more rice with less water’ and to reduce greenhouse gas emission from irrigated paddy land, various crop and water management techniques have been under evaluation, such as Systems of Rice Intensification (SRI), aerobic rice culture, alternate wetting and drying etc. to increase water use efficiency and modify the CH4 emission rates.
There is visual evidence that rice crops grown with SRI methods are more resistant to the effects of drought and storms (wind and rain), with robust root systems that mitigate water stress and resist lodging. Several studies and farmers’ field research have shown that SRI could provide better alternative to mitigate these challenges with improved rice production and economic return in a sustainable way. Therefore, considering the varied socio-economic-bio-physical realities of rice farmers, there is urgent need to adapt and adopt suchfarmers’ friendly agronomic practices as a means to address both challenges facing the rice sector i.e. to deal with location-specific heterogeneity which is the main factor for yield gap experienced at farmers’ field and to reduce CH4 emissionsand increase water productivity for irrigated rice paddies.
In light of the above facts, the proposed project would like to document and assess the results of collaborative action research in central Thailand, where rice researchers, extension personnel and rice farmers would undertake season-long learning, training and research to address the above-stated challenges. The core idea of the project is derived from successful collaborative project work carried out in NE Thailand under competitive research grant from CGIAR. The project expects to strengthen farmers’ capacity to deal with location-specific heterogeneity and develop area-specific technologies on rice production systems focusing on sustainable water use to address the challenges of climate change and economic development; it aims to help the farming community prepare against the negative externalities of the climate change; and to achieve higher net returns from rice farming. The results and process would be shared with community, extension agencies and other agencies working in other parts of the country through meetings, workshops to showcase this project as an alternative to the existing systems.
Key Activities
A bottom-up, participatory problem census will precede the development activities with conduct of participatory action research involving men and women rice farmers, AIT and the Rice Department (RD) research workers with other stakeholders (local govt. Officials, etc.).
The following key steps will be followed:
a. Village Immersion – to visit and collect primary information along with the local extension workers. The information so collected will be utilized to developed a baseline survey questionnaire;
b. Baseline Survey – A detailed baseline survey will be conducted, keeping in mind the various socio-economic groups of the farmers;
c. Crop Calendar Development – The information collected will be analyzed and presented as crop calendars back to the farmers’ groups to re-validate the information collected;
d. Final Crop Calendars and Search of Options – Farmers’ groups will be presented with the final crop calendars of their practices of rice husbandry, using ‘non-formal education based’ tools like leading questions to help farmers establish cause-effect relationships leading to establishing what are the key problems - especially those associated with water use efficiency;
e. Problems Listing, Prioritization and Development of the Action Research Plans – Water-use related problems will be focused on and suitable local innovations and ideas from previous project experiences in Thailand and beyond will be explored; outside experience (detailed research will be carried out beforehand) will be shared. This will be followed by the development of action research designed along the categories such as: topics, title, time requirement, material requirements, procedures, information collection (data collection), data analysis, interpretation etc. In addition, general and other needed logistical issues, e.g., land, compensation issues, assignment of the responsibilities, etc., will be discussed with the partner farmers and GOs for the smooth conduct of action research;
f. Field experimentation – Core farmers will present the details of the action research (objectives, methodology, information collection, how they would interpret the results) to members of the community and their friends and begin the field experiment;
g. Weekly Farmers’ Meetings – Concept of ‘agro-ecosystem analysis’ will be introduced, and weekly crop monitoring and information recording will be ensured by the participating farmers and the trainers;
h. Mid–term evaluation – Partner farmers will organize the mid-season evaluation; thereby the trends of the results, other pertinent issues, etc., will be discussed and shared with everyone in the community;
i. Harvest-day/Field day – Field day will be attended by all farmers along with local media, govt. staff and other concerned stakeholders where the results of the action research will be shared and key lessons learned will be taken note of;
j. End-of-season Workshop - A workshop would be conducted in the vicinity of the action research village, where the local and other policy makers, etc., will be invited, and an open forum will be organized to share the results from the action research.
Contact Info
a) Dr. Prabhat Kumar , Senior Research Specialist
b) Abha Mishra, Rice Researcher (abhamishra@ait.ac.th )
Mailing address: ASE / SERD, PO Box – 4, Khlong Lunag, Pathumthani
12120, Thailand
Telephone: +66-2-524-5477
Fax: +66-2-524-6200
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