Industrial maize farming in Myanmar’s Shan State is devastating families and landscapes as well as fuelling ever-increasing levels of transboundary haze, generating urgent calls for serious changes to animal feed supply chains.
After graduating with a Master’s degree in International Journalism from Birmingham City University, Pratch worked for four years as a reporter at The Nation newspaper in Bangkok. From September 2019 he has been serving as editor-in-chief at GreenNews Agency, a Bangkok-based environmental news service.
Buried in debt: Shan contract farmers’ future rocked by insecurity
Apart from being a source of transboundary haze, poorly regulated contract farming is trapping the small farmers of Myanmar’s Shan State in a cycle of overwhelming debt, land dispossession and environmental degradation.
Beyond industrial maize farming’s dead-end in Myanmar
Diversified farming systems and agrobiodiversity are essential in defending food security and coping with climate crisis. But both are being undermined in Myanmar’s Shan State, where the industrial maize industry is making local farmers more vulnerable to climate change.