Integration of Environmental and Sustainable1/ Development into Agricultural Educational Programe

บทคัดย่อ

In the past three decades, agricultural productivity has increased remarkably in many parts of the world, including Thailand, with the application of modern technologies and with public and research policies supporting the Green Revolution. Thailand's policies have encouraged farmers to grow crops and raise livestock for sale as exports. Cash crops of rice, maize, mungbean, soybean and longan have changed land-use patterns and made Thailand the world's leading exporter of rice.  This success has entailed negative cor.sequence, including overproduction and low market prices, overdependence on external inputs and associated risks, degradation of soil and water resources, and toxicity to farm workers and other living organisms. Problems in marketing agricultural exports have become increasingly serious. Farmers have incurred high debts to make the capital investment needed to shift to high-production agriculture.

Deforestation and land degradation have become critical. In some parts of the country (particularly the ecologically more fragile Northeast), farmers notice a greater tendency for drought in the wake of deforestation, and problems due to soil depletion and salinization. In the North, farmers have noticed an increase in health problems due to agricultural chemicals. Community organization concerned by the dwindling flow of local rivers have launched campaigns to protect their watersheds. Government, private, and religious organizations particularly non governmental organizations (NGOs) have organized campaigns and seminars to raise public awareness of environmental problems. Many Thai universities, including the Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University (CMU), are also working in this area.

The objective of the Faculty of Agriculture, CMU, is to provide students with the concepts and tools of an interdisciplinary approach for analyzing the function and development of agricultural systems in order to dewign, implement, and evaluate sustainable alternatives. Student learn the fundamentals in basic courses, followed by more indepth studies in specific majors like Land Resource Management, Agroforestry, and Agricultural Systems. The programme prepares students for careers in extension, development and research.

The Faculty's research directly related to sustainable agriculture has included M.S. thesis research on sustainable systems of agriculture; ongoing research on alternative agroforestry systems for ethnic minorities in Northern Thailand; and international collaborative research on the Sustainability of Agricultural Systems of Southeast Asia, involving other researchers in the Southeast Asian Universities Agroecosystems Network (SUAN). The Faculty is also closely involved in number of development projects.

From its experience, the Faculty of Agriculture, CMU, has found that its structure provides a firm foundation for providing interdiscriplinary learning of agricultural systems for sustainable development. Interdisciplinary approaches can be especially well integrated in programmes at the postgraduate level, where students already have a basic understanding of fundamentals, and administrative cooperation among departments is more easily arranged. Its research and outreach through involvement with development programmes add real-world elements to student experience and preparation of careers.

The process of addressing Faculty programmes on the envrionment and sustainable agriculture can proceed best through the sharing of experiences among insititutions. This can involve collaborative research, seminars and expert consultations (such as the recent consultation on Agroforestry curricular hosted by CMU and organized by FAO), and short-term exchange of students and Faculty staff.

Other Thai universities also playing important roles in education, research, and extension of sustainable agricultural practices, include : the Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University (Northeastern Thailand), the Faculty of Agriculture, Kasetsart University (Bangkok), and the Faculty of Natural Resource Management, Prince of Songkhla University (Southern Thailand). At Khon Kaen University, the interdisciplinary approach has developed through its strong programmes in agroecosystems research and farming systems research. At Prince of Songkhla University, sustainable agriculture through natural resource management has become a required course for agriculture students.

All these programmes in Thailand generally share constraints that can be met through the provision of

• resource persons who can join in both teaching and research


• teaching materials and more sophisticated equipment for measuring environmental effects


• scholarships


• information dissemination assistance

At the Faculty of Agriculture, CMU, these needed inputs could build on the interdisciplinary foundation and help the Faculty provide leadership forimproved research and education that comprehensively addresses key issues emerging in environmental degradation and sustainable agricultural development, for the benefit of the people in Thailand and othercountries with similar agroclimatic conditions.