Uncle Wai Rodtayoy at his salt farm in tambon Koek Kharm, Samut Sakhon province. Photo: SOMCHAI POOMLARD
Yet farmers still love the profession and want to protect their farmland.
Recently, a new development project has made headway in the area of Samut Songkhram province. This time several salt farmers, including Uncle Wai, embraced it with open arms – though it entails another kind of problem.
The project is solar energy. In a move that has begun to change the landscape of the salt farms, several solar energy companies have started leasing empty land to put up rows of solar panels to produce electricity and sell it to the state.
Uncle Wai last year decided to lease 42 of his 70 rai to a company to lay solar cell panels. The project does not require environmental impact assessment, or EIA, because it falls under an NCPO order issued early this year exempting any renewable energy project of less than 10Mw from environmental study.
The transformation from salt farms to solar farms sounds like a graceful metamorphosis but it has caused worry among conservationists and birdwatchers, because the salt farms and coastal zones in the community were listed as wetlands of national significance over a decade ago by the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (Onrep).