Abstract: Nan Province in northern Thailand has lost nearly a third of its forest cover since 1977, driven by smallholder maize expansion into steep uplands. Cropland now generates over 87% of watershed soil erosion, contributing to severe flooding, seasonal haze, and sediment loading that harms the Chao Phraya river system and the tens of millions who live downstream. For decades, maize persisted not because it was profitable but because it guaranteed a buyer. That certainty is now eroding. Rising input costs, softening farmgate prices, and out-migration of working-age adults are collectively undermining maize's viability. The question is no longer how to stop deforestation but how to repurpose existing maize land toward crops that facilitate ecological restoration while raising farmer incomes.
Medicinal agroforestry offers a credible alternative. Tree-based medicinal crops generate 5–12× higher income per rai than maize and connect directly to Thailand's rapidly growing institutional demand for Thai herbal medicines, with government targets to triple state hospital spending to 3 billion baht by 2026. K-Agro Innovate (KAI) is building this value chain in Nan, bundling off-take contracts, transition finance, and extension services to absorb risk that smallholder farmers cannot bear alone.
Our findings indicate that trust (not price) is the binding constraint on farmer adoption; that hospital uptake is limited by physician unfamiliarity and underdeveloped clinical evidence, not patient resistance; and that KAI's economic model lacks a clear pathway from land abandonment to ecological recovery. We propose three integrated interventions:
1. Farmer Accreditation System: Activate village-level social infrastructure — referral networks, communal harvest days, and collective quality assurance — to scale extension officer supply while shifting the quality assurance burden from KAI to the community.
2. Herbal Medicine Evidence Accelerator: Embed Thai plant-based medicine into medical school curricula, engage NHSO to set-up reimbursement pathways, and build a traceability system. Together, these will build evidence and create institutional demand.
3. Community-Centric Restoration: Close the gap between economic intervention and ecological outcome through a community forest boundary ritual that formalizes forest protection, and enact a monitoring system run by village masters and advanced farmers.
Together, these proposals form an integrated response to the supply-side, demand-side, and ecological challenges KAI faces, creating conditions for durable forest recovery and equitable income growth across Nan's upland communities.
Two interactions stood out as genuinely valuable. Early help structuring our problem tree gave us a clearer analytical backbone at a stage when our research direction was still taking shape. And a push to go deeper into the literature - rather than accepting our initial framing - was the kind of direct, high-quality feedback that actually changed how we approached the evidence base. Those touchpoints mattered more than we probably signaled at the time.
It was really helpful to to talk our ideas through with another fellow peer in our program, who was familiar with the sector, but not as "in the weeds" as my partner and I were, helped us think through the first and second level drivers of the problem we wanted to solve.
What I'm most proud of is that this thesis was built for a real client (K-Agro Innovate (KAI), an organization working on sustainable agriculture in Northern Thailand) not just an academic audience. That meant every analytical choice had to hold up to scrutiny from practitioners as well as professors. Our three core proposals (a Farmer Accreditation System, a Herbal Medicine Evidence Accelerator, and a Community-Centric Restoration model) are designed to be implemented, not just published. Knowing that our work might actually inform how smallholder farmers in Nan Province make livelihood decisions (in a region that has lost nearly a third of its forest cover since 1977 )made the stakes feel real in a way that kept me honest throughout.
Two things I wish someone had told me earlier: First, find a real client. Having KAI as a client from the start meant we couldn't afford to be vague — every recommendation had to be grounded, feasible, and defensible to people who would actually use it. It's the single biggest thing that separated our work from feeling like an academic exercise. Second, narrow ruthlessly and early. The instinct is to cast a wide net — to ask big, sweeping questions. But the most rigorous and useful work I did came from constraining the question: one province, one crop substitution, one livelihood model. I think I've reframed to think specificity isn't a limitation but rather is what makes a thesis actionable.
Born and raised in San Francisco, I studied economics at the University of Chicago before moving to Nairobi, Kenya to join Boston Consulting Group, where I spent three years working on climate adaptation and food systems projects across East Africa. I then returned to school to pursue a Master's in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at the Harvard Kennedy School, a program focused on development economics. At HKS, I've served as a teaching assistant for Dr. Joshua Greene's Evolving Morality, a course on the science of moral progress and AI ethics, and for Dr. Wolfram Schlenker's Food Policy, a course on climate, agriculture, and global food systems, reflecting my deeper interest in using evidence to drive more effective and equitable outcomes. My career ambition is anchored in school meals policy in low- and middle-income countries, where I believe well-designed programs can simultaneously address nutrition, education, local agriculture, and sustainability. My thesis examines whether medicinal agroforestry (growing turmeric, ginger, and other high-value herbs) can offer smallholder farmers in Northern Thailand a more profitable and ecologically restorative alternative to maize cultivation. Outside of work, I love cooking vegetarian food, run whenever I can, and am always chasing a new book or podcast!
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