OPINION

Corn waste to blame

The haze is already upon us, but where does it come from? In Chiang Mai, most point to forest fires, but as the valleys fill with haze with not a forest fire in sight, there must be another source. What is that? Small farmers burning their corn field waste before the burning ban arrives.

What to do?

The obvious thing to do is to use the millions -- yes, millions -- of tonnes of corn waste for something useful like biofuel. Treating corn stalks, cobs and husk not as waste but biofuel would serve national interests: reduce dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels and electricity, help Thailand meet its international commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 25% by 2050, and lower healthcare costs and economic losses from morbidity and mortality, imposed by PM2.5 emissions from burning.

With government funding, top university and think tank engineers are researching crop waste for biofuel energy solutions. They have successfully designed high capacity, high efficiency, high-technology furnaces, boilers and incinerators that operate without releasing GHGs or PM2.5.

Unfortunately, these solutions are worthless today because they float above grassroots realities. As always, the devil is in the detail.

In this case, the devil is in the distribution of the corn waste. In North Thailand where half of Thailand's 5.5 million tonnes of corn is grown, most fields are inaccessible because they are located on steep, rocky mountain slopes. (Nationally, it is estimated that 52% of corn is grown on state "protected" forest (mountain) land.) There are no roads and no way to collect the waste efficiently or economically. Many focus on cob alone, because it is available in relatively centralised, accessible locations. Cob, however, is just 11% of corn biomass. Any such scheme leaves stalk, 63% of corn crop waste, to burn, hardly a satisfactory ending.

The problem does not stop with the simple impracticality of collecting corn waste. Missing from the above are the costs of (1) labour to cut and collect corn stalk, (2) building access roads, (3) trucks, drivers, loaders and diesel fuel to haul waste to the plants, and (4) CO2 emitted by construction and trucking. These devilish costs are immense and hide in the weeds between the excellent, emission-less designs of biofuel burning furnaces and actual country corn fields.

It is not surprising that although there is a flurry of academic and think tank laboratory design work around furnaces that emit neither GHGs nor PM2.5, there is no evidence of lab or field work focused on collecting corn field waste efficiently and cost-effectively. Until these problems are solved, however -- until the devil is rooted from the details -- corn crop waste burning will continue to generate GHGs charged to Thailand's CO2 emissions allotment and PM2.5 that sickens or kills thousands of Thais annually.

Re: "A smouldering issue", (PostBag, Dec 17).

Khun Shmendrik's frustration over government inaction in addressing PM2.5 is well justified. With the onset of every blanket of choking pollution, authorities "mull" and "consider" actions, but in reality they only deflect and delay until the winds of a new atmospheric front clear away the pollution. Unfortunately, sometimes we suffer weeks or months waiting for that to occur.

I and my colleagues at Mahidol University find the advice from Doctors Aldis and Coker in their Dec 24 letter on the nature of Covid-19 in Samut Sakhon useful and timely. The implementation of genomic and evolutionary data will be instrumental in curbing the new outbreak.

Covid-19 Network Investigations Alliance or CONI is a multi-institutional cooperation launched to implement genomic surveillance in the fight against Covid-19 in Thailand. We can answer some questions raised in the letter from Aldis and Coker regarding the Samut Sakhon virus population. Based on the data from 40 cases collected in Samut Sakhon and 4 cases from Tachileik workers provided by the Institute of Urban Disease Control and Prevention, these virus populations are related, but they are not genetically close enough to be direct chains of transmission. The grave concern is that genetic variations found in the Samut Sakhon samples suggest multiple generations of transmission. There are two possibilities that could explain this phenomenon. These virus populations could propagate in another country, likely to be Myanmar based on their association with migrant workers, before entering Thailand in multiple events. Another alternative explanation is that their ancestor has been spreading in Thailand, starting probably at the end of October to early November of this year. The genomic data from CONI is now openly accessible at GISAID.

By analysing more cases from different provinces, Thailand can gain insights into this new outbreak. The coordinated effort to analyse virus genomic data in real-time has been proven successful in several countries. It could work for Thailand as well.

It is hard to believe Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul who has recently dismissed the coronavirus as being something that is "trivial" or even "nothing", is the same person who at the height of the first wave of the pandemic in April was blaming foreigner tourists here who did not wear masks for spreading Covid-19, and saying that "they should get out" of the country. It seemed at the time that the minister was very serious about stopping the spread of the disease and was even boasting to foreign media outlets about the kingdom's success in combatting the virus.

Apparently, when it comes to Southeast Asian guest workers here, the health minister does not seem to be concerned about these individuals spreading the coronavirus, but when it comes to foreign tourists in the nation, he apparently believes that they pose a great threat to the spreading of the disease.

And the numbers bear this out. Despite coming up with various new special visa initiatives for tourists to come to the country, few have come to Thailand since the pandemic started earlier in the year, yet migrant workers continue to come here both legally and illegally.

It is clear that tourists from western countries have gotten the message from the Thai government that they are not wanted here, and hence are going elsewhere on there travels abroad.

I am afraid people get it wrong. It is not about the bad migrants and migrant smuggling. It is about systematically exploiting migrant workers and keeping them in living and working conditions which are disastrous. But that would mean that Thais are at fault and that cannot be.

I read lately about some European researchers who investigated the common narratives during and after huge pandemics (mostly cholera and the plague) in the past 500 years in Europe. Not surprisingly, always outsiders were blamed.

I am an American who considers myself privileged to be retired in Thailand. Like most people from my country, the only experience I had of seeing exotic animals was in a cage at some zoo. Yes, we have the national symbol of the American Eagle. It is revered and protected in my country. My experience of seeing the Thai national symbol -- an elephant wandering around a park made my heart pound. It was wonderful to witness in my lifetime. Now this magnificent animal has fallen on hard times. I cannot say that there is not a tear in my eye at what is happening to them.

While you are pardoning war criminals, corrupt politicians and those who are guilty of nothing more than perjuring themselves, obstructing justice, and grifting for your personal benefit, may I respectfully bring to your attention the case of Brandon Bernard?

Convicted of a murder committed by his gang when he was 18, he has consistently expressed remorse for his crime and has spent the last 21 years on death row as a model prisoner participating in outreach programmes to prevent others from getting involved in crime.

Five of the surviving nine members of the jury that convicted him and the federal prosecutor in his trial have called for the commutation of the death penalty in his case. This appeal has been supported by US Senators and Representatives, by lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr who have represented you in other cases, and by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens.

If any person is more deserving of presidential clemency than Mr Bernard.

Oh sorry. Scrub that. I just realised that you had him executed two weeks ago.

On International Human Rights Day.

Re: "PAO elections: old politics?" (Editorial, Dec 24).

While riding along with a neighbour on the local highway, the roadside was inundated with those larger than life campaign posters advertising candidates for the PAO positions. My neighbour yawned, then said, "Ah, another bunch of thieves who want to be elected. The corruption never ends." He said he was familiar with the candidates but did not trust them, their parties, or what they represented. Promises made, promises broken. I asked how he'd vote. He said that in order not to lose his voting rights he'd go inside the polling booth, pick a ballot and invalidate it. He did not care, as long as his name appeared in the ledger that he did vote. Smart man.