Karen Community Fighting Corn and Coal for Clean Air in Northern Thailand

Sprite walks through his maize farm in Mae Cham district, Chiang Mai, Thailand in August 2025 | Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.

In an article for Mekong Independent, Gerald Flynn brings attention to the Karen Indigenous community in Northern Thailand, and the problems of air pollution they face as a result of maize cultivation.

Farmers in the region straddling northern Thailand, Myanmar’s Shan state and Laos grow maize to supply Thailand’s booming animal feed industry. Every year before the planting season, they set controlled fires to clear their fields of crop stubble left over from the harvest. The result: surging air pollution that sends the region’s towns and cities shooting up the rankings of the world’s most polluted places every February-April, when the burning peaks.

To fix the problem, Thai leaders have tried everything from threatening to cut farmer subsidies and restricting where they can plant maize, to promoting alternative livelihoods and introducing microbial sprays for stubble decomposition. But nothing seems to break the cycle of seasonal haze, which still reaches levels more than 14 times higher than what’s considered safe by the World Health Organization.

In Omkoi district, which encompasses Nong Krating village in Chiang Mai province, local officials decided years ago that enough was enough. In 2017, fearing the loss of the forests in which residents forage for herbs and vegetables, along with deteriorating air quality and further restrictions on maize farming, district officials took the drastic step of banning the cultivation of maize entirely.