Is there still a need for land management research for the highlands

Highlands of Northern Thailand are one of the most fragile ecosystems in the region. Major development has come in for the past 30 years due to national and international concerns on illicit opium cultivation by the ethnic minorities and national campaign against communist insurgencies. One of the major changes in the highlands is the change in land use and land management systems. A field survey during 1994-95 suggested that internal pressure of population increase combined with external pressures (e.g. restriction in the use of forest land by national conservation policy) and opportunities (improved transportation and expanding market) have led the pioneer and rotational swiddeners to move away from traditional land use of shifting cultivation to more permanent land use with various level of intensification. Intensification without innovation would involve no qualitative change in land management practices. Such innovations as introduction of new cash crops and the development of sprinkler irrigation have led to a dramatic jump in productivity and food security, e.g. multiple cropping with irrigation, mixed annual cropping of cash crops with soil and water conservation measures or agroforestry systems. The bottlenecks for highland agriculture in the future will depend on the local people's ability to adapt their traditional farming systems to meet market opportunities or subsistence requirements under pressures from both internal and external forces. These multiple forces may include a high rate of population growth, conflicts with government policies such as forest protection and watershed conservation, breaking down of traditional land tenure systems and lack of land security, inadequate communal resource management as well as commercialisation. Examination of local adaptability to land use changes and land management under multiple pressures at different levels requires a different perspective to population based models. A concept of agrodiversity has recently been suggested as an alternative research framework to gain a better understanding of the causes and consequences of the multiple pressures on land use change and farmers' ability to cope with changes. In practice, the concept had yet to be operationalised in order to understand the development of sustainable and/or unsustainable land use systems on the highlands. This understanding may readily apply to improve the processes of participatory land use planning and elevation. In this connection, there might be a need to develop a certain guideline for assessing land sustainability.