The golden years for farmers in Ban Yang Hom, Chiang Rai arrived 20 years ago when local authorities installed a pumping station on the banks of the Ing River.
A watchman was hired to guard the station in Khun Tan district. Over the years, 15 more pumping stations were added, along with 14 state-built dams and weirs to help farmers increase their yield.
In the beginning, the water flowed and farmers prospered. For the first time they were able to grow off-season crops to increase their incomes.
But with more water also came cash crops with higher returns, such as corn, bananas and sugarcane. Hillside forests were hacked down to make way for the new fields, increasing pressure on water supplies as those forests naturally hold groundwater.
The level of the Ing River, the main water source for Phayao and Chiang Rai, started to drop with the greater demand and drought.
But farmers kept pumping.
Thanom Utama, a local farmer and village headman, said communities carrying heavy debt to cover the cost of fertiliser, equipment and seeds started to collapse.
In their rush to plant more crops year-round, the farmers had created a debt cycle dependent on the availability of water. The "water wars" erupted in violent clashes at some villages last month.
"With all the infrastructure, anyone can now pump water according to their capacity," said Mr Thanom. "This broke centuries of traditional water management where the water kept flowing and the plants grew."
Farmers once diverted water based on informal agreements and reasonable demands. But those agreements no longer exist.
In the midst of severe drought, farmers by the Ing River weren't pleased to learn that a 1,000-rai banana farm was sucking up a large volume of water, worsening shortages in 13 villages in Khun Tan and Phaya Mengrai districts. The bananas are grown for export to China.
A FLOOD OF DROUGHT
The 2016 drought has a familiar ring to those of the past two years. Low water levels in dams, the government encouraging farmers to hold off planting until the rainy season arrives in June and expected lower returns on crops.
The El Nino weather pattern has swept across Southeast Asia since 2014, resulting in the region's lowest rainfall in 30 years. Drought and farmer despair now seem routine. Irrigation Department statistics show the amount of usable water in dams has fallen by more than half across the country from pre-drought 2013 to the end of 2015. The amount of stored dam water in the North fell from 7.47 billion cubic metres to 3.48 billion. In the Central region it tumbled from just over one billion to 574 million and in the Northeast from 4.34 billion to 2.13 billion. The Office of Agricultural Economics (OAE) said drought damaged 2.87 million rai of crops in 2015, affecting more than 270,000 farmers. The yield for the year fell 15.5 billion baht below projections.
Kanokporn Ditkrachan, a rice farmer and member of the Alternative Agriculture Network in Suphan Buri, believes that farmer debt, more than weather patterns, is driving the perennial water crisis.
"Farmers are locked in a cycle of debt so they can't stop farming. They can't cope with change because their lives are tied up in debt," she said.
"The government has seen the whole situation as a water problem. So it's kept feeding water to farmers. This won't solve drought because it doesn't look at the root problem of non-stop cultivation."
An OAE study released in 2014 shows the total debt of farmer households more than doubled from 204 million baht in 1999 to 453 million baht in 2012.
Ms Kanokporn said the use of expensive pesticides and fertilisers are major contributors to farmer debt.
The Thai Chamber of Commerce's Centre for Economic and Business Forecasting predicts farmer debt will likely increase by 12% this year compared to last year because of drought. Other studies show that it may take two years for the agricultural sector to fully recover.
EXPORT PROBLEMS
Alongside India and Vietnam, Thailand ranks as one of the top three global rice exporters.
Much of that rice comes from the 22 central provinces of the Chao Phraya basin, which has developed an extensive irrigation system in recent years. This allows for year-round cultivation of up to four rice crops -- compared to two annual crops in the past.
OAE data for 2013 shows seasonal rice yield per rai in the Central region was nearly double that of the North and Northeast. This was despite total arable land in the Central region being much smaller.
But this year's drought has not spared the Central provinces. In Suphan Buri, the home of the late former prime minister Banharn Silpa-archa who built an extensive irrigation system in the province, rice plants located next to irrigation canals now stand lifeless.
Despite the high yields of previous years, Ms Kanokporn said very few Central region farmers keep rice for consumption. Ironically, they buy packets of rice to eat. Many of them also plant hard rice which is milled into gluten-free rice flour.
A large number of Central region farmers have also switched to sugarcane and corn, which command a better market price but incur investment costs of fertiliser, chemicals, tractors and labour.
"How can we have enough water when we are dragged into serving the indefinite demand of industry?" Ms Kanokporn said.
DIVERSITY AND DEMAND
Focusing on monoculture, the production of one crop in large amounts, also puts greater demand on water resources, activists say.
Witoon Lianchamroon of Biodiversity Action Thailand (BioThai) believes that government policies driven by big agriculture are encouraging monoculture.
"The Thai irrigation system is created to support big-scale monoculture that consumes large amounts of water and takes money from farmers' pockets," he said.
"It won't work if the government is using monoculture to fix a problem caused by monoculture."
As part of its drought response, the government in February announced a 93 billion baht loan package to help farmers survive and improve productivity.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives also announced measures to reduce farming costs and increase competitiveness.
Central to the measures is farm zoning, which encourages farmers to switch from rice to other crops the ministry says need less water, such as sugarcane and corn.
A ministry survey found only 29 million of 130 million rai of farmland is covered by state irrigation, and about 42 million rai are planted with crops not suited to the area and climate conditions.
Large-scale farm projects were also promoted. Farmers planting the same crop were encouraged to band together and manage their farms as a single unit to ease production costs.
As an incentive, those joining the project would receive loans from government financial institutions at the nominal rate of 0.001%.
More than 29,000 farm households confirmed they will join the project, covering a land area of 662,669 rai.
However, the project has been widely criticised by organic farmers and green activists, who say it opens the way for expansion of single-crop farming, heavily reliant on chemicals and fertilisers. They also suspect the policy is intended to push the planting of sugarcane and corn which suits the interests of big agriculture firms such as the Mitr Phol Sugar Group and Charoen Pokphand Group (CP).
CP came under fire last month for purchasing maize for animal feed from farmers in Nan and other northern provinces. Environmentalists say this contributes to deforestation resulting in "bald mountains".
During a recent interview, CP vice-chairman Suphachai Chearavanont defended the government policy, saying it was in line with market demand.
He said Thailand had planted large volumes of rice without monitoring the global surplus. Mr Suphachai said it was better to focus on in-demand crops such as corn, which require less water than rice.
In response to criticism of CP's involvement in deforestation in Nan, Mr Suphachai announced a social enterprise plan, under which corn planters will be encouraged to grow other cash crops such as coffee, which requires less farmland and returns a higher profit.
Farmers in Nakhon Sawan told Spectrum that, lured by good prices, they had sucked water from irrigation canals to feed corn and sugarcane to increase their crops.
"Drought is being used as an opportunity to move forward a single crop economy," said Mr Witoon. "I can't see how this will improve farmers' livelihoods or tackle drought in the long term."
PRICE TO PAY
Nipon Poapongsakorn, a distinguished fellow at the Thailand Development Research Institute and its former president, said single-crop farming has nothing to do with the water shortage.
"It is blamed all the time," he told Spectrum. "But the real problem is inefficient management of land use and water. Higher demand for water is also another cause."
A major land-use management problem is man-made structures that block natural waterways, resulting in both flood and drought.
Poor management of dams during the 2011 floods also contributed to the 1.36 trillion baht in economic damages estimated by the World Bank.
Mr Nipon said the Yingluck government's controversial rice-pleading scheme, which promised higher prices for farmers, was also a major contributor to current water shortages.
Water had to be released to serve the extension of off-season rice cultivation between 2012 and 2014. The Yingluck administration released water from major dams, causing storage shortages which did not factor in risks such as El Nino and salt intrusion into the Chao Phraya River, which needs to be treated with dam water.
According to TDRI research, in 2014 the Irrigation Department estimated that two billion cubic metres of water would be needed for about 2.5 million rai of off-season rice in the Central region.
But due to the generosity of the rice-pledging scheme, farmers planted rice over six million rai, which forced the department to release 4.8 billion cubic metres of water.
"We managed water poorly, and nature aggravated the situation," Mr Nipon said.
Despite the implosion of the scheme and reports of farmer suicides due to financial difficulties, Mr Nipon said the link between drought and debt is not strong.
"If there is good water management, water distribution to farmers will be fair no matter what their personal problems are," he said.
WATER USAGE
Royal Irrigation Department research shows that rice is the most water-intensive crop. Rice production uses 1,038-1,147 cubic metres per rai for a single round of cultivation. Each crop takes about 100 days to grow, meaning farmers with access to reliable irrigation can plant and harvest more than three crops a year.
Sugarcane uses 1,626 cubic metres per rai, but its 10-month cultivation period means less water is consumed per year.
Maize uses 583 cubic metres per rai for a 100-day cultivation period.
According to the OAE, rice prices have declined after the rice-pleading scheme was scrapped.
The average price for jasmine rice fell from 15,365 baht in 2012 to 12,800 baht in 2015, while white rice fell from 10,156 to 7,800 baht.
The price for maize and sugarcane declined slightly over the same period, influenced by global markets. The maize price fell from 7,630 baht per tonne in 2015 to 7,310 in 2012, and sugarcane from 954 to 850 baht per tonne.
Sugarcane cultivation areas in Thailand increased 2.73% per year over that period as a result of the government's policy to encourage upcountry rice farmers to shift crops.
RID director-general Suthep Noipairoj said sugarcane had a higher yield than rice and maize, which resulted in better profits for farmers.
While both rice and maize require 100 days for one crop to be cultivated then harvested, they also require farmers to purchase new seeds to plant for each new crop. Sugarcane on the other hand requires eight to 10 months, but can be harvested for three years thereafter without the need to replant.
The RID's 2015 report on agricultural products showed that on average one rai of land produces 15 tonnes of sugarcane, 0.7 tonnes of maize and 0.5 tonnes of rice.
Mr Suthep said this results in a higher yield for a lower investment. Sugarcane, along with maize, beans and cassava, can be alternative "dry season" crops outside the traditional rice growing seasons, he said.
He added the RID is trying to encourage farmers to select plants that suit local conditions and water availability. Currently, there are many farmers cultivating rice in areas where the soil and water resources are unsuitable.
FLAWED POLICY?
Sucharit Koontanakulvong, from Chulalongkorn University's Department of Water Resource Engineering, believes the state's water management policy is intrinsically flawed. Rather than focusing on delivering more water to meet farmer demand, the government should give priority to helping the rural sector adapt to climate change. This would mean raising awareness and providing information so farmers can plant appropriate crops for changing conditions.
"The state has limited capacity [to manage water effectively]. Achieving sustainability weighs on the local community," he told Spectrum. "If farmers know the risk of disaster in advance, they can select the right crops and adapt to the situation."
The TRDI's Mr Nipon said the centralisation of water management has led to many local conflicts.
The outdated irrigation system gives priority to rice planting, even though farmers plant a variety of crops in different seasons.
"The government must decentralise water management and allow water users in the same water basin to manage resources," he said.
"Allowing water users to have self-management can avoid water conflict and give them a sense of ownership to care for water resources."
One management tool could be a water usage fee to encourage water conservation. The RID does not charge farmers for irrigation water. In Bangkok, consumers pay only 15 satang per cubic metre of water. The industrial sector pays 50 satang for irrigation water, but water from natural sources such as rivers is free.
In its efforts to supply more water, the Department of Groundwater Resources is digging 6,000 wells across the country to mitigate drought impact.
The RID also announced a study into the feasibility of diverting water from the Mekong to the Chi and Mun rivers, to feed water to the northeastern provinces. The project has already raised alarm bells with downstream farmers in Cambodia and Vietnam.
According to the Agriculture Ministry, the amount of water allocated for use during the dry season from Nov 1, 2015 to Apr 30 this year is 11.42 billion cubic meters.
Of that, 2.17 billion is for domestic consumption, 5.5 billion to maintain the ecosystem and other uses, 196 million for industry and 3.56 billion for agriculture.
For the Chao Phraya basin, the ministry allocated 3.2 billion cubic metres: 1.1 billion for public consumption, 1.38 billion to maintain the ecosystem, 15 million for industry and 700 million for agriculture.
The ministry said at the end of March, 83% of water had been distributed.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
For activists like Ms Kanokporn and Mr Witoon, planting varied crops at the right time of year, or polyculture, and organic farming methods are the best way forward.
They both argue these would increase yields and farmers' incomes, while reducing dependence on expensive chemicals and fertilisers.
Mr Witoon pointed to a 2013 study of 157 farmers in three northeastern provinces which found they could produce 317kg of rice per rai using organic methods, compared to the general farm average of 248kg.
BioThai has unsuccessfully tried to push the government to reduce loan interest rates from 5% to 2% to encourage organic farming.
In Ban Yang Hom, the farmers are beginning to change their ways. Mr Thanom has led them in efforts to restore wetlands and mangrove forests near the Ing River.
In the Northeast, the Alternative Agriculture Network has been formed to promote organic multicrop farming.
Ubon Yuwah, a leader of the AAN in Yasothon, said he took more than 10 years to switch, bound by fear of losing income from single-crop farming.
Similar to Ban Yang Hom, Mr Ubon's community was introduced to concrete dikes and pump stations more than two decades ago.
Guards were hired to watch over the stations as well. Then he watched farmers fall into financial ruin.
"The drought crisis proves that state water management does not look at the local situation. It has enhanced farming yields, but farmers lose the capacity to depend on themselves," he said.
His farmer friends lost the opportunity to earn income from off-season crops because they waited for the government to provide watermelon seeds and irrigation water.
But he chose to plant watermelon, beans and vegetables soon after the rainy season while moisture was still in the ground.
"The government needs to participate with farmers in water management and support sustainable farming choices," he said. "Otherwise, farmers will never get out of debt. Debt will drive the water problems."
You can't make them drink: Water buffalo graze on drought damaged land in Nakhon Nayok, where rice farmers are feeling the pinch.
Scorched earth: Sugarcane farming produces high yields but is controversial.
Going bald: An almost barren mountain in Phetchabun, allegedly the result of corn farming.
When the river runs dry: A farmer in Suphan Buri’s Sam Chuk district pumps water from Makham Thao-U-thong canal into a paddy field.