2011 Volume 2 Issue 1 Pages 1-6
During the past few decades, land use change has been taking place over the Phatthalung watershed and the major change has been the replacement of paddy fields with rubber plantations. Those changes cause the reduction of paddy field and crop land area. Together with the population growth, urbanization and soil degradation, the food availability becomes a concerned issue. The food availability situation of Phatthalung watershed under different possible scenarios has been investigated as the major objective of this study. The scenarios developed in this study included the biophysical factors, socio-economic factors and policy factors. The projected food production of four scenarios except the worst case exceeded the local consumption rate and the high surplus of rice was found in the best case scenario. The projected food production from the baseline and the moderate case scenarios was medium, whereas the projected food production from the worst case scenario was lower than the household requirement, which can be interpreted as insufficient. These results from the four scenarios should be recognized in order to prevent and avoid the local and national food, especially rice, insecurity in the future.
