MANILA, Philippines -- If Thai farmers are progressive in their various agricultural projects today, you can credit that in a big way to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. More than 50 years ago, he set up the Chitralada Agricultural Projects right in a portion of the 100-hectare compound of the Royal Palace.

We visited the project last May 31 when we joined a Philippine delegation that observed the latest developments in the dairy industry of Thailand. The group was headed by Dr. Davinio Catbagan, assistant secretary of the Department of Agriculture. Thai ambassador to the Philippines Prasas Prasasvinitchai accompanied the delegation throughout the four-day visit.

The king had the small farmers in mind when he set up his agricultural projects. He wanted to develop practical farming techniques that could be adopted by the ordinary farmers. Today, one can find a wide variety of projects that include dairy farming, rice, fruits, vegetables, aquaculture, processing plants for fruits and vegetables, and more.

Because the projects are designed to be doable by the ordinary farmers and entrepreneurs, they are relatively small “non-profit” projects. But there are also what they call the “semi-profit” projects that are operated on a commercial basis. Just like the milk processing plant which is supplied with fresh milk by the farmers. The plant serves as a market for the dairy farmers. This encourages them to go into dairying because it is a good source of livelihood.

The dairy project is not just a market for the farmers’ milk. It is also a showcase of technologies that the dairy farmers can adopt for their own profitable operations. For instance, they can learn the right techniques of maintaining good health of their herds. They can learn to give their animals the right feed for different stages of the animals’ growth.

The Royal Project has also a showcase of a biogas system where the animal manure is used to generate gas for cooking or lighting.

The dairy processing plant processes about 50 tons of milk every day into various products like pasteurized homogenized milk for sale to wholesalers who are members and to various schools at an especially low price to improve the health of young people, and acquaint them with the value of fresh milk.

The dairy project also produces powdered milk as well as milk tablets, cheese, ice cream, milk toffees, pasteurized skim milk, butter, condensed milk and yoghurt.

Rice, of course, has been a major interest of the king. Rice is the main stable food of the Thais and is a major foreign exchange earner for the country. Many years back, the king learned from the farmers that they had very low yield from their upland rice.

So the king put up experimental rice fields in the palace grounds. He ordered the planting of upland rice varieties to discover optimum cultivation methods and to produce good seeds for distribution to the farmers. They experimented on both the glutinous and non-glutinous upland varieties. At the rice experimental fields, legumes such as peanut, mungo and soybean are planted after harvest not only to provide additional income but also to increase the fertility of the soil.

Forest conservation is high in the mind of the king. That is why he has asked his researchers to develop briquetted rice husk which can be used as fuel for cooking instead of wood. Compressed husk briquettes are now produced in big volume.

Fruit and vegetable juices are popular products in Thailand. And it could be said that Chitralada has played a big role in popularizing these products. The researchers have developed techniques that ensure good quality of the juice products. These juices include pasteurized natural sugarcane juice, pasteurized roselle drink, pasteurized ginger beverage, pasteurized Bael fruit drink, pasteurized chrysanthemum tea, lime juice and others.

The Chitralada project also cultures a lot of mushrooms, including those with medicinal properties. One such mushroom is the Ganoderma which is claimed to be useful in treating or preventing cancer. Spirulina is another health product that the king has urged to be popularized. This is an algae that is said to contain a lot of protein. Spirulina chips and capsules are now sold commercially in the country.

The Chitralada project is also popularizing medicinal herbs. It is maintaining a medicinal plant garden which boasts more than 200 species known to have medicinal value.

Another important advocacy of the Chitralada project is the conservation of plant genetic resources. The objective is to conserve endangered indigenous plants of agricultural importance by setting up a genebank to provide a database and genetic material for the improvement of crops.

These genetic resources include indigenous rice varieties cultivated in different regions of the country, beans and peas, field crops like sugarcane and cotton, vegetables, ornamental plants and Thai orchids, fruit crops such as jackfruit, mango and durian, forest trees of economic importance such as teak, Thai medicinal plants and other useful plants like paper mulberry physic nut (jatropha) and others.