Since 1957, communities in 12 villages of Tambol Nongwaeng Soke Phra have continuously experienced the rapid changes of economical ,social and environmental system. The main cause for this change has been the policy of promotion of monoculture, especially cash crops for export. The communities and their immediate environment in Nongwaeng Soke Phra, like others in the Thai North-east have been affected seriously from such policy.

The adoption of monoculture for export have always been accompanied with the application of modern technology in order to improve the yield. The technology has come in the form of machinery, pesticide and chemical fertilizer. All these new agricultural practices have resulted in a vast area of land degradation. Natural water courses are so silted and polluted they hardly provide the source for livelihood. The communities are unable to practise the local approaches they once got used to. The policy and its modern technology had driven the majority of communities into heavy debts.

The year 1987 - 1997 had seen the prosperity of industry around the communities without a sign of regulation. Local population have been spoilt and thus ignore the condition of the environment. Average population have to struggle for daily living and for freeing themselves from the heavy debts. The prevailing situation makes the initiate of conservation and protection activities by the communities extremely difficult.

The Project, which is a small CBO conceived in 1990 with the objective to promote communities to solve their livelihood problems by adopting integrated farming in the agricultural process, has learnt that the rice-field dikes have potential to bring back the fertility and thus rehabilitate the natural environment. Therefore, the idea of tree plantation in the rice fields should no longer be irrational to farmers.

Project goals or objectives (including GEF problem-area addressed by projects):

1. To support the learning process for communities in the areas of environment degradation and its relationship with their livelihood
2. To encourage community leaders to adopt the environmentally-friendly agricultural system by rehabilitating sustainable agriculture practice by setting up model of ?integrated forest on the rice-field dike?
3. To establish networking of education among local farmers group, Tambol Administrative Organization, responsible government agencies so as to expand the indigenous knowledge on the rehabilitation of environmentally-friendly agricultural system

Activities to be carried out under project:

1. Community Preparation
-To coordinate with local CBOs to make project understood and ensure participation
- To survey ,gather data & information and select communities from target
area through the cooperation of the Tambol Administrative Organization
2. Promotion of Learning Process of the target agricultural groups
- To launch seminars & workshops for summarising the lessons learnt and experience so as to set up system of environmentally-friendly production
- To launch training on the development of production plan for 30 selected
groups in order to generate self-confidence
3. To support the Fund for Rehabilitation of Rice-field Dike for Life and the Environment
4. To set up networking of learning process on rehabilitation of the environment of rice- field

Project participants and/or beneficiaries:

1. Population from 5 villages of Tambol Nong Waeng Soke Phra
2. The Tambol Administrative Organization of Nong Waeng soke Phra
3. The government agencies of Phol District, Khonkaen Province

Anticipated results of project:

1. There emerge of at least 15,000 trees of various native species in 30 ha in the selected 30 farmers.
2. The close cooperation among members of sustainable agriculture networks in the North-east in implementing the environmentally-friendly agricultural system.
3. There emerges a demonstration project for other relevant government agencies to establish appropriate plan for local development.