
Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, the country's largest agribusiness conglomerate, on Tuesday reiterated its stance against buying maize from areas where growers opt to burn the plants after harvesting, saying the policy is to help counter the transboundary haze problem while promoting sustainable agriculture.
"CP has clearly announced it will not purchase or support maize which comes from any areas where growers practice crop plant burning," said Jomkitti Sirikul, senior vice-president of CP Group.
He was speaking on Tuesday after a meeting with Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Narumon Pinyosinwat in which they discussed the current PM2.5 dust pollution which is partly a result of transboundary haze.
"CP has also adopted a satellite technology to detect hot spots so that it can decide which areas are to be instantly banned from selling farm products to the company," he said.
The company normally purchases maize, for instance, for its animal feed production business, he said.
In 2016, CP introduced a traceability system into Thailand's animal feed production industry, which has now been expanded to cover 230,670 hectares of maize-growing areas in the southern part of Shan State in neighbouring Myanmar, he said.
This surveillance has significantly curbed haze coming in from Myanmar and improved confidence in the produce imported from the country, as well as in products exported by Thailand that are made with ingredients from Myanmar, he said.
CP has also implemented a programme aimed at giving farmers in the northern province of Nan an incentive to stop burning biomass and instead turn to green agriculture, he said.
Under this programme, farmers are supported to replace their practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land with growing coffee plants, which earns them more than 1.6 million baht a year, he said.
The project has recently been expanded to cover forest areas totalling 12,079 rai in other provinces including Chiang Mai, he said.