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The objective of this study is to understand the factors that cause debt problems of small farmers in Samarnmit Village, how they use the social capital and local knowledge in tackling problems individually and in groups. This qualitative research is based on the information gathered from in-debt interviews (10 cases), focus group discussions and participatory observation. The interviewees are formal village leaders, spiritual leader, core group leaders, elder group and women groups. The study contents are about the causes of migration of the villagers from Northeast to settle down in the North; village profile; community culture; causes and factors of the small farmers’ debt problems, how they tackle problems individually and in groups by using social capital and local knowledge. The study reveals the causes and factors that force the small farmers in debted as follows;1.Some of the small farmers began to face debt problems when they first settled in at Samarnmit Village with empty hands. Therefore they needed to buy lands for rice production and investment of agricultural equipment and machines. Some of them had limited land and not sufficient to produce rice yield for the whole family, so they had to rent more land from local people. Moreover, practicing modern agriculture consumes high investment costs, which include machines, land rental, fertilizer and pesticide and intensive labour.2.Small farmers relied on rain fed water for rice plantation. Sometimes there was flood and almost all the rice fields were destroyed. While they had loaned for investment from the bank and local moneylenders (with high interest rate). Some cases sold land in order to get rid of debt problems and became labourers in local areas. Some sold all the land when it was high price and moved to other provinces. However, they were not successful with new occupations and returned to Samarnmit and became labourers in local areas. 3.Small farmers became victims of consumerism and spent lots of money in building new houses and purchasing consumer goods, e.g., electric appliances, motorcycle, etc., by cash and credit.4.Investment of children education in higher level, e.g., diploma or undergraduate levels. The children needed to study in town, as a result, the costs of living were much more expensive. The parents needed to gain more income for the children’s costs on dormitory, food, travel, consumer goods, motorcycle and/or mobile phones, etc.5.Northeastern style cremation also caused farmer to be in debted, as the host had to organise the ceremony at home for three days and three nights by inviting monks and guests and offering monks clothes and money and providing guests several meals. 6.Old aging, sicknesses of farmers and lacking of labour in family caused them in accumulative debted. The old farmers had to take care of school aged grandchildren which had high expenditures, while their income were very low.The study also reveals that the small farmers had accumulative debt between 12,000-400,000 Baht. Sources of loan included Agricultural Bank, Agricultural Cooperation, moneylenders, Village Fund, saving group and cooperative shop, etc. It has also found that the new long-term debt cycle for the farmers is from the investment of their children education. In order to tackle debt problems individually, the farmers have to borrow money from the Thai Agricultural Bank and local moneylender, as well as to earn more income from fishing. They are able to make use of the existing social capital in community, natural resources, e.g., fish, shrimp and wild vegetable from community forest. They also use local knowledge for fishing and producing fishing equipment for own use and for sale to the neighboring villages. Moreover, some of them work on food processing, e.g., fermented fish and soured fish for their own consumption and for sale by using northeastern local knowledge. To tackle the problems in groups, villagers have formed several self-help groups such as, saving group, rice bank, food processing group, sewing group, cooperative shop, etc, by using the lessons learned from various self-help groups organized by governmental agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and community itself. The members earn some income and benefit from the groups. They have also found that the groups become self-reliance and sustainable and could become the real sources of welfare for members and for the poor in community. Social capital is the key to success, which includes trust and dependence among the villagers. However, the self-help groups could reduce debt problems in a certain level only, since they are chronic problems. For gender role in tackling debt problems, the finding reveals that women could do well on domestic work, outdoor work and self-help group activities as equal as men. Therefore, the community leader and men should provide women more opportunity in participating in community development work, so that women status could be promoted. Gender issue is the key element for sustainable development, so the community should learn and practice more on the issue. Based on the finding, suggestions include these following: the government should urgently consider farmers’ debt problems seriously and prioritised them as national agenda of national development plan. Moreover, the government should see these problems as the problematic of national policy rather than the farmers’ individual problems and should find sustainable solution. The government should discharge all the farmers’ debt occurred from their unsuccessful agricultural promotion projects. The government should urgently implement the Land Reform and Expropriation Act of 1975 and distribute the unused private land to the poor farmers. In additional, the failure poverty reduction plan should be adjusted and improved in order to respond to the urgent needs of the poor. The government should promote the simply way of living in Thai society. Lastly, the government should seriously encourage the farmers to practice the self-sufficient economic principle with funding support for the alternative agricultural project implementation.Moreover, the farmers should have self-sufficient and adjust their consumerism habit to the simple way of living. They should have self-discipline in the financial management, and should practice the principle of self-sufficient economic. The mono-crop agriculture should be changed to the alternative agricultural activities. In addition, both men and women should participate in the establishment of the Master Plan of community development by linking the existing social capital, local wisdom and group activities to boost community economy. Moreover, the community should work closely with schools in creating local curriculum that serves needs of local community and persuades children to stay within community. The cultural aspects, social capital and local wisdom should be included into the curriculum, so that the children could appreciate them. The holistic approach of sustainable natural resource management plan should be set up in order to protect environment in community. Lastly, in order to fight for the distribution of the unused land to the landless farmers, the networking of People Organizations should raise the issue of sustainable development and emphasize that the “Land” are not goods, but they are sustainable livelihood and sources of socio-economy in communities. |
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