- Rubber farmers in Thailand are increasingly adopting agroforestry as a more climate-friendly and sustainable way of cultivating the commodity, which ranks among the world’s largest drivers of tropical deforestation.
- Much of Thailand’s lowland tropical forests were cleared decades ago to make way for the booming rubber industry, transforming the landscape into a patchwork of monoculture plantations and turning the nation into the world’s top rubber producer.
- But cultivating rubber in an agroforestry system is not only better for the environment and wildlife compared to monocultures, it also supports livelihoods by giving Thai farmers greater profits plus a wider array of produce to sell over a longer span of time each year.
- To help more farmers make the switch, government agencies, trade groups and key parts of the rubber supply chain are backing agroforestry as an alternative to monoculture by providing trainings and price premiums, though experts say additional supports like policy changes are needed.
BANGKOK — Little by little, the canopy of branches and interlocking leaves closes overhead as our vehicle rollicks deeper into the plantation. Pakamart Tongkam points from the driver’s seat into the stark thicket of rubber trees that now surround us: “When I was a child, I slept out there in a small hut while my mum and dad worked in the plantation through the night.”
Several years later, as an adolescent, Pakamart helped her parents with their daily rubber tapping. The routine was grueling, she tells Mongabay during a visit to Nathawi district in southern Thailand’s Songkhla province, a heartland of rubber production. Rising at 2 a.m., the family would trek through the humid plantation to strip the bark of hundreds of individual rubber trees to collect the milky latex.
Most of all, Pakamart recalls an overriding air of uncertainty: if it rained during the two-hour window of time it took for the latex to drip into the collection bowls, the entire day’s yield would be ruined: “No income for that day,” she says. Relying on a single crop meant such poor harvests were devastating for their livelihood.
But despite the precarious conditions, rubber farming is a major source of income for more than a million smallholder farmers in Thailand, who together produce 90% of the country’s sizeable annual yields of natural rubber.
Rubber has historically been a major driver of deforestation across Southeast Asia. And with recent studies showing that at least 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of forest have been lost to the crop since 2000, it ranks high on the global list of commodities most responsible for forest loss, behind beef, soy and palm oil.
Thailand produced more than 4.7 million metric tons of natural rubber in 2022, accounting for one-third of global supplies and making it by far the world’s largest rubber producer. Yet the small-scale farmers who drive this gargantuan industry are grappling with mounting challenges ranging from crop diseases and soil erosion to unstable market prices, plus the impacts of climate change. As a result, many struggle to make ends meet, and often carry significant debt.
“These days, farmers cannot get enough income to care for their families from latex alone,” Pakamart says. “Weather patterns are shifting. Last year, rubber farmers could tap only about 100 days out of 365 days in the year.”
Agroforestry gaining momentum
Much of Thailand’s lowland tropical forests were cleared decades ago to make way for the booming rubber industry. Deforestation peaked in the 1990s as commercial rubber monoculture plantations and their associated road networks sprang up, driven largely by policies at the time that incentivized the practice. The landscape of the southern provinces, where the warm, humid climate is favorable for growing rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis), were dramatically transformed from natural forest to a patchwork of plantations.
Alongside the highway between Hat Yai city and rural Nathawi district, the legacy of deforestation is plain to see. Regiments of rubber trees file relentlessly past the car window. Within, the plantations look dark and sterile, mostly devoid of understory vegetation due to the high use of agrochemicals. The small pockets of natural forest that remain typically cling to hillside slopes that are too steep to cultivate, or else hang on within the obscure confines of state-managed military land.
The economic inequities and ecological devastation of the rubber industry are not lost on Pakamart. Following her stint in her parents’ plantation, she earned a science degree at Prince of Songkhla University and is now managing farmer training programs at the Rubber Agroforestry Sustainability Foundation (RASF), an enterprise set up in 2021 to promote rubber farms’ sustainability and resilience through agroforestry.
Agroforestry combines useful trees with shrubs, annual crops and herbs in a system where they can benefit from their close association to produce food, fiber, timber and medicine while supporting biodiversity, building soil and water levels, and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
This more climate-friendly and sustainable cultivation system is gaining traction in Thailand as an alternative to monoculture rubber, and proponents say it can address both environmental and economic risks. Roughly 15% of Thailand’s annual rubber yield is now produced in an agroforestry setting, according to a 2019 study.
Cultivating rubber in combination with an array of fruit and timber trees, medicinal plants, herbs and vegetables provides farmers with a source of income during the rainy season when latex yields dip, and diversifies the range of markets they can access, thereby building their resilience to climate and market disruptions.
Studies also show that agroforestry improves ecosystems services in rubber plantations, enhancing air, water and soil quality while sequestering carbon and providing habitats for a range of pollinators and wildlife.
Pakamart began her outreach work close to home. She first convinced her father of the benefits of rubber agroforestry, and now says she can persuade anyone: it was a big deal for a daughter to alter the thinking and business practices of her father. “My father said to me, ‘I sent you to university to study, not to teach me!’ But when he learned about agroforestry, he changed his mindset.”
Recently, Thailand’s agroforestry movement received a big boost when the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR), an industry association that aims to develop a sustainable rubber supply chain, announced funding to train 1,000 farmers based in southern Thailand in the environmentally friendlier farming practice by 2025. The GPSNR agroforestry initiative, funded by tire manufacturer Michelin and carmaker Renault as part of their sustainability portfolios, has been running since 2022.
RASF is leading the effort to roll out the training events under the initiative across six provinces. Alongside technical advice, Pakamart and her colleagues are linking farmers with sources of native timber seedlings from the government’s forestry department, and are hosting trainings to raise awareness of which crops to co-plant and what standards farmers will need to meet to sell their product to the more profitable sustainable rubber market.
‘Bring the forest to the farms’
A major challenge facing RASF and other similar initiatives in Thailand is convincing farmers who have long practiced monoculture farming to change their approach, because timeworn beliefs can run deep. RASF works with roughly 270 small-scale farmers in southern Thailand, many of whom previously thought agroforestry would harm their latex yields, for instance.
While providing farmers with technical information and support through trainings and peer-learning farmer networks is key, sharing science-based evidence on the biodiversity, ecosystem services and economic benefits is also paramount, according to Sara Bumrungsri, president of RASF and an ecology professor at Prince of Songkhla University.
Sara has worked alongside rubber agroforestry farmers for several decades to compare agroforestry and monoculture outcomes. Variously looking at the soil community and composition, nutrient turnover rates, carbon sequestration, and the diversity of bats and birds, he has found that even relatively simple intercropping systems resulted in improved outcomes. “We have more and more research evidence, and we can use this to inform farmers,” he says.
Crucially, he’s found that latex yields don’t suffer in agroforestry systems. And in some cases, agroforestry yields can outstrip that of monoculture, with trees remaining productive for longer. While a monoculture rubber farm will become unproductive and have to be clear-cut and replanted after about 20 years, Sara has seen 40-year-old agroforestry plots continue to produce ample quantities of latex. Thus, even though there are fewer rubber trees in an agroforestry plot compared to monoculture — to make space for a diversity of other crops — rubber tree longevity is higher, and productivity per tree in such systems is typically about the same as those in monocultures, or even higher.
Sara’s interest in agroforestry began in 2009, when he mobilized with a group of fellow researchers to halt deforestation at Kho Hong Hill, the last remaining tract of natural forest in Hat Yai city and a vital watershed source of the university’s water supply.
“We talked to the farmers and asked them to stop cutting trees for timber and rubber monoculture, but [they] said no, because they had no other land to cultivate,” Sara says. “So we had to rethink how to work with them. Finally, we realized that we had to bring the forest to their farms!”
Agroforestry was the answer. The researchers established a conservation group and helped the Kho Hong Hill rubber farmers plant high-value timber and other useful plants on their plots. They also encouraged the farmers to reduce their use of pesticides and herbicides. Life slowly returned to the land, and Sara witnessed firsthand how agroforestry could shift people’s views.
“The senior farmers told us they would never cut these timber trees they were growing on their land, so that their children could decide their fate,” Sara says. “And they also decided not to cut the trees up the hill, because they learned of their value from growing the seedlings. We became like a family. It was an amazing change.”
It’s in the interests of the farmers to allow their timber seedlings to grow old and mature, according to Sara. His research indicates that at the end of a 25-year rubber plot life cycle, farmers intercropping just four species of high-value timber, such as ironwood and sentang, among their rubber trees could anticipate up to a 10-fold increase in timber income, compared to selling just their lower-value, monoculture-grown rubber tree wood.
Sara estimates that about 50% of the previously exploited area of Kho Hong Hill is now in recovery as a result of the action of the farmers and the conservation group, who continue to work together with the support of RASF, which grew out of the work of the researchers on Kho Hong Hill.
Tangible farming gains
Sujittra Tongpradab, 56, manages one of the agroforestry plots on Kho Hong Hill. She’s farmed rubber for 41 years, a skill she learned from her parents and that has passed from generation to generation in her family. She chose to switch to agroforestry from her heritage of monoculture rubber 11 years ago, and hasn’t looked back. In particular, she values the year-round availability of produce.
When the rubber latex can’t be harvested during the three months of the wet season, she instead harvests fruits, bamboo shoots, and a herb called pak riang, a key ingredient in local coconut-based curries. “The market to sell fruits, herbs and vegetables is always open, all year round,” Sujittra tells Mongabay. “We can always rely on this other productivity.”
While rubber trees form the basis of her agroforestry system — the latex from which accounts for roughly 80% of Sujittra’s monthly income — she intercrops high-value timber and fruit trees within the rubber tree canopy. Stately ironwood, phayom and agarwood trees stand alongside mature coconut palms and fruit trees like santol, mangosteen and limeberry.
Walking into Sujittra’s 2.5-rai (0.4-hectare, or 1-acre) plot, the air is fresh and the ground yields softly underfoot, a testament to the nutrient-dense soil, a result of years of microbial activity breaking down leaf litter and other detritus. Blanketing the moist soil is a tangled carpet of herbs, many of which have medicinal value, and through which sprout pineapple, coconut and durian seedlings. Here and there, the rich earth also yields edible mushrooms, a staple item that can fetch Sujittra up to 300 baht per kilogram ($8.30 per kilogram, or $3.80 per pound) at the local organic produce market.
But beyond the market value of her produce, Sujittra says she cherishes the perpetual food security that comes with the agroforestry model. “When you farm like this, you can create a delicious curry for all your family just from your land,” she says.
Between her daily latex yields and selling other produce at markets in nearby Hat Yai, Suttjira averages a monthly income of about 10,000 baht ($276) from her total land area of 9.5 rai (1.5 hectares, or 3.7 acres). This income is far superior to when she grew rubber in a monoculture system, she says, when she struggled to make ends meet during months of poor latex yields.
Agroforestry’s premium price
While Suttjira attributes her consistent income in part to the diversity of year-round produce in her agroforestry plots, she also acknowledges the importance of being able to sell her latex for a better price. Besides providing farmers with access to technical knowledge and supporting their diversified farming practices, a crucial part of the RASF program also facilitates access to premium-priced latex markets.
To do this, RASF linked up with a dedicated processing plant in Phattalung province called Paratex, which offers a bonus of 4 baht per kilo (11 cents/kg, or 5 cents/lb) to farmers growing rubber in sustainable agroforestry systems. By exclusively processing agroforestry-produced latex, Paratex ensures there’s no mixing with latex grown in monocultures. An important end buyer of the agroforestry latex is a condom manufacturing facility in Malaysia operated by Germany-based Richter Rubber Technology (RRT).
Paratex and RASF are working with 130 agroforestry farmers in Songkhla province who participated in the premium latex program in 2023, a total they aim to scale up in step with the growth of the rubber agroforestry sector. The premium price is a significant economic advantage for these farmers; their peers cultivating rubber in monoculture systems in Songkhla province tell Mongabay that at times they’re paid 25% less than the premium price brokered by RASF for agroforestry-grown latex.
Sudthida Thantanon, director of Paratex, has firsthand experience of the challenges such farmers face, having grown up in a rubber-farming family. As a consequence, she says she’s happy to pay a little more than market rate for latex grown under conditions that enable farmers to address the world’s big problems that extend beyond the boundaries of their plantations. The price premium reflects the actual costs farmers incur, she says.
“I understand firsthand the inconsistencies and insufficiencies in income when relying solely on rubber,” Sudthida told Mongabay in an email. “I am deeply committed to supporting farmers in improving their livelihoods [and] hope to garner respect for their profession. Ultimately, I aspire for farming to be a sustainable occupation, recognizing that farmers are the true stewards of our environment.”
Having access to premium-priced markets like Sudthida’s that value the sustainability of agroforestry-grown latex has been transformative for many of the farmers Mongabay spoke to. Although their agroforestry plots have fewer rubber trees compared to monoculture, the combination of enhanced productivity per latex tree (due to the ecological benefits of agroforestry) and premium prices delivers average monthly latex incomes typically on par with earnings from the same area of rubber monoculture.
A self-sustaining system
Also farming close to Kho Hong Hill is Jarunsak Sungtong, 53. The layered understory of the 20-rai (3.2-hectare, or 7.9-acre) plot he’s tended for 15 years is aesthetically beautiful, hinting at the atmosphere of a natural, self-regulating tropical forest. Nestled beneath the canopy of 19-year-old rubber, teak and ironwood trees are a rich diversity of sweet-scented edible fruits and shrubs: snakefruit, pineapple, jackfruit, mangosteen, durian and pak riang.
The planting and maintenance of the plots was strenuous in the beginning, but Jarunsak had help from members of the local agroforestry farmer network, a community initially set up by RASF. The network members share knowledge and news gleaned from their agroforestry experience and help one another on their farms when needed. To some extent, this helps to address a key barrier to agroforestry adoption in the region: the shortage of available and affordable labor to tackle the considerable task of planting and harvesting produce.
Over a period of five years, Jarunsak’s plot developed a thick ground cover, meaning expensive and toxic chemical herbicides are now completely unnecessary; hand weeding is only an occasional job. Neither is there any need for costly pesticides or artificial fertilizer: naturally occurring nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants and a rich soil microbial community take care of the soil fertility.
Besides his aversion to agrochemicals, Jarunsak favors low-cost, nature-based methods of deterring local frugivores that frequent his land. With such an abundance of fruit in his plots, he spots civets, squirrels, monitor lizards and long-tailed macaques from time to time in his plot, in addition to forest-dependent birds like woodpeckers, coucals and blue-winged pittas, and an array of butterflies, moths and other native pollinators. To protect his produce from would-be nibblers, he uses the leaves of coconut palms he cultivates to weave protective baskets that he carefully nestles around the ripening fruits.
“Doing agroforestry like this is the answer for everything,” Jarunsak says, “especially for food, the long-term environment and your own health. I feel mentally and physically healthy farming in this way.”
Other farmers Mongabay spoke to reported that adopting agroforestry practices has improved water retention on their land, thereby enhancing growing conditions for their rubber and timber trees and enabling them to withstand longer and more intense droughts.
Matcha Numarn, 67, began intercropping his lowland rubber plantation to the west of Hat Yai 14 years ago as a way to get more water for his farm. Prior to his foray into agroforestry, he had to dig a well 6 meters (20 feet) deep to access water. Now, water is just 1 or 2 meters (3-6 ft) from the soil surface.
“Some people don’t like to plant other trees with rubber,” Matcha says, because “they’re afraid they will compete for water and nutrition. But what I can see is that the trees help to support and sustain each other in this ecosystem.”
Policy can drive adoption
Given the mounting evidence demonstrating that agroforestry rubber is much better for both people and planet than monoculture systems, the natural rubber supply chain is increasingly engaging with it as a way to earn green credentials. While this is a broadly positive and welcome move, experts say it’s important to note that rubber agroforestry systems haven’t been found to support as much biodiversity as undisturbed natural forests.
“Although there is more biodiversity in clonal-based rubber agroforestry systems compared to monoculture systems, it is still very far from that of natural forests,” says Eric Penot from the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD), “but agroforestry rubber is better than nothing.” Penot adds that at a landscape scale, networks of agroforests could to some extent provide wildlife-friendly corridors between fragmented patches of natural forest.
Traditional “jungle rubber” systems — the practice of planting rubber trees within regenerating patches of secondary forest, often as part of slash-and-burn agriculture — support higher levels of biodiversity, according to Penot, and were historically much more prevalent in Thailand. However, government policies that incentivized monoculture cultivation led to their demise several decades ago, he says.
Just as policy shifted the balance from more climate- and biodiversity-friendly cultivation to monoculture in the past, could it drive the change back again? According to Penot, key government agencies, such as the Rubber Authority of Thailand (RAOT), are increasingly acknowledging agroforestry as a modern way of farming that offers many positives.
However, a lot of work remains to translate that shifting outlook into policy and practice, according to Kamrap Phanthong, a coordinator of the Southern Alternative Agriculture Network who has been working on this issue for 42 years. “The sustainability movement is happening … the momentum is there,” he says. “We just need to wait for the government to catch up.”
Kamrap says RAOT could improve the financial support available to farmers making the switch to sustainability. Current agroforestry subsidy mechanisms are similar to those for monoculture systems, he says, which means farmers can’t access sufficient funds up front to help with the heftier startup costs associated with planting additional seedlings to get their agroforestry plots up and running.
According to Penot, the RAOT could also do more to promote knowledge-sharing platforms that help monoculture farmers learn from the experience of their agroforestry-practicing peers. He also says more research is needed to scope out local market demand and availability to avoid market saturation as agroforestry production expands.
Another factor that could hold monoculture farmers back from making the switch is their lack of land titles. Making the transition to an agroforestry system takes a leap of faith and acceptance of a risk toward profitability, at least for the first few years while marketable crops are growing. Therefore, farmers might require assistance to secure clear land tenure prior to making such a long-term investment.
Trade groups also have a role to play. The decision by GPSNR to scale up agroforestry trainings in southern Thailand is “part of a strategic, large-scale and industry-wide shift to support sustainability and equity,” according to Stefano Savi, director of GPSNR. A sustainability fund under development as part of the group’s new supply chain assurance system will focus on further expanding such farmer capacity building: “Our members are currently ironing out the final details of this funding mechanism, and we should be able to share more about it by the end of the year,” Savi tells Mongabay.
Diversification for the future
Back in Nathawi district, Pakamart checks in with Takon Phutseekaeo, 62, a farmer who attended one of the GPSNR-funded agroforestry trainings in December. After having farmed rubber in a monoculture for 35 years, following the event he planted 30 timber tree seedlings among his rubber trees. He’s also growing stink beans, jackfruit, pineapples, bananas and bamboo, and says he’ll add shade-tolerant robusta coffee to the mix in the future.
Takon says he chose to diversify the types of crops he cultivates due to a recent dip in latex yields from leaf-drop disease, an increasingly prevalent rubber pathogen in southern Thailand. The opportunity to join a group of like-minded farmers doing something positive for the environment and society is also important for him, he says.
Even if markets shift and rubber generally becomes more profitable, Takon says he wouldn’t switch back to monoculture. His instincts from decades of engagement with the rubber market tell him that prices are volatile: if the rubber price goes up and everyone floods the market, the price will crash. “I don’t want to rely only on rubber,” he says.
With three children each beginning families of their own, Takon says he aims to transfer the high-value timber he’s cultivating to them as an inheritance. “Perhaps they could use the timber to build their houses,” he says.
The last activity at RASF’s training events tasks each participant to design their own “dream” agroforestry plot using their own rubber plantation as a template. For Pakamart, it’s satisfying to see how each farmer selects a different set of the components of agroforestry that most suit them. In this way, they have the opportunity to design their own future.
Although the rubber agroforestry plots in Songkhla province are relatively small, each is managed according to the particular approach and unique objectives of the individual farmers. Some plantations are meticulously tended and ordered, whereas others look wilder and messier. But all reflect the same striving for personal resilience, and care for the planet and its wide array of inhabitants.
Carolyn Cowan is a staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on X via @CarolynCowan11.
Banner image: Fruit and medicinal herbs gathered from a 15-year-old rubber agroforest. From left: wild betel leaves, pak riang leaves, fan palm, snake fruit, pineapple, and a frond of mountain serdang. Image by Carolyn Cowan/Mongabay.
Related audio from Mongabay’s podcast: A conversation with two experts about how agroforestry helps build food security and boost biodiversity while improving soils and fighting climate change, listen here:
See a related feature:
Climate, biodiversity & farmers benefit from rubber agroforestry: report
Citations:
Pendrill, F., Gardner, T. A., Meyfroidt, P., Persson, U. M., Adams, J., Azevedo, T., … West, C. (2022). Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation. Science, 377(6611). doi:10.1126/science.abm9267
Warren‐Thomas, E., Nelson, L., Juthong, W., Bumrungsri, S., Brattström, O., Stroesser, L., … Dolman, P. M. (2019). Rubber agroforestry in Thailand provides some biodiversity benefits without reducing yields. Journal of Applied Ecology, 57(1), 17-30. doi:10.1111/1365-2664.13530
Nattharom, N., Roongtawanreongsri, S., & Bumrungsri, S. (2021). The economic value of ecosystem services of rubber-based agroforest plantations in South Thailand. Journal of Sustainability Science and Management, 16(5), 247-262. doi:10.46754/jssm.2021.07.016
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