MAE CHAM/OMKOI, Thailand — Rain lashed down in the northern Thai village of Nong Krating as Sawattiphon Wongkasettakon described the worsening air pollution that sweeps in through the mountains here each year. “It didn’t used to be so bad, but in the last three years it’s become impossible to ignore,” Sawattiphon, a former deputy chief of the village, told Mongabay on the porch of his home in August. “The sky gets dark, it’s uncomfortable when we breathe. It blows in from the maize farms.” 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…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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