The sad state of Thai labour in the countryside

[IsaanAussie]

I suggest you need to research more about the essence of Thai culture and what motivates Thai farming people. It is nothing like our western ambitious career path. It is tradition, family, religion and the like. Sabai, sabai. Do not judge Thai people by your own standards of success.

Just now, Yellowtail said:

If the bottom falls out of the rice market (subsidies aside) the rice rots in the field as no one can afford to pay people to harvest it.

Anyone with land can prepare the ground, plant seed, fertilise and harvest without a baht in their pocket. The system exists to make it happen. The rice market will continue to increase in volume along with population. There will always be the "middlemen" to finance it. 

What has changed here is the younger generations are better educated (taught to think) and have higher expectations. But the lot of a farmer has not changed, accepting all the risk and little reward, no different anywhere in the world. Here those new expectations have arrived faster. Success was a well feed family, now he is a subsistence farmer in debt, alone and aging. 

Ask yourself the question, could you plan your life as a farm laborer here? 

[seajae]

On 11/22/2020 at 8:04 PM, Yellowtail said:

 

Most factories either provide food or an additional allowance for food, and people get paid for 30 days for working 5 or six days a week, get overtime and thirty sick days a year. 

 

600 a day is 18,000 a month. Did thy work 12 months a year?

they didnt have a job, usually people without a job do what ever they can to get money especially when it is  more than factories are paying for a full day, giving them 2 or 3 days a week(much shorter hours than a factory worker and they still get to sit at home for half a day) for a couple of months is better than doing <deleted> all and getting nothing especially with covid putting so many out of work anyway. Boils down to them not wanting to work in the first place, seems to happen a lot in Thailand, even the ones in the big shopping centres would rather play on their phones than to serve/help you as can be seen any day of the week. Only an idiot would think they are better off sitting at home playing games than earning money for a few months,

[kickstart]

7 hours ago, Yellowtail said:

 

One really should not have anything to do with the other. What you have to pay your staff does not have any direct effect on what you are able to sell your product for.

IA remind me not to ask yellowtail to be my financial manager ,with most businesses labour is the most expensive input ,

Our small place we now have the wife's daughter in to help us cut some Napier grass and help chop it for silage ,it is only for a few hours in a day over 7-12 days ,I pay her just those few hours, but it has put 40% on to the cost of making  our silage.

We used to grow mung beans and at the time they were hand-picked , workers were  paid  by per kg  picked, we had local  labour one year we got a 10-15 Cambodians in ,not a good idea  they just picked the easy to get at pods ,not the  ones under the plant ,again  that was a very high percentage on our crop inputs .and the crop still had to be thrashed out by our local mobile thrasher.

Now they are all cut by combine 600 baht/rie job done ,call it progress, and I would say lower input costs.so in the end a bigger bottom line 

The only now  crop entirely harvested by hand is cassava ,that around here is done by a team of Cambodians ,who harvest and haul the crop in their own   Rot Itain, and charge per rie .  

The op grows top fruit . he can not control selling price ,but it stands to reason  it  certainly has a direct effect on  selling his crop,  if his picking costs are lower he is going to make more money on selling his crop .

[bodga]

On 11/22/2020 at 1:50 PM, 473geo said:

 

Economic migrants. Plenty that remain, marry have kids, live in the countryside, build a home on parents land live rent free, do some local work, close to family, maybe work in government positions. travel into the urban areas for work or weekends to 'party'. I am not denying young people go where employment is available. I am critical of the concept of eradication of the family plot and replacing with mechanised large farms, as I feel it will destroy the options, back up, and support, that the Thai economic migrants currently enjoy.

One great stress relief is knowing when you are working if you are out of work tomorrow you can return to the family home and reassess. Thai people do not have a strong welfare system.

Although I understand the corporate drivers behind large mechanised farming, to destroy the face, and family farm culture of rural Thailand in my opinion is not the way to.

I know that  in my Wifes  village  many there have sold  their inherited  land, squandered the cash and now  cannot return to the land, her Sister is  one prime example.

[bodga]

15 hours ago, OOTAI said:

He has often complained to my wife about how lazy the people are that periodically come and work for her.  She told me the other day that he had said, "aren't they ashamed to be doing so little when they see me out there working hard and me being much older than them".

Its  nice to hear some Thais stand  up and say this instead of  accusations of Thai bashing etc.

[473geo]

3 hours ago, bodga said:

I know that  in my Wifes  village  many there have sold  their inherited  land, squandered the cash and now  cannot return to the land, her Sister is  one prime example.

Your point being? I know many people who have crashed cars, doesn't mean everybody should be prevented from driving.

[NanLaew]

The farmer with a smaller holding seems to have a problem retaining any labor, any labor. I was pondering if this is being exacerbated by Thailand 4.0 when I picked up on the following in the UK's Guardian.

 

1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland

 

"One per cent of the world’s farms operate 70% of crop fields, ranches and orchards, according to a report that highlights the impact of land inequality on the climate and nature crises.

 

Since the 1980s, researchers found control over the land has become far more concentrated both directly through ownership and indirectly through contract farming, which results in more destructive monocultures and fewer carefully tended smallholdings. ...

 

Asia and Africa have the highest levels of smallholdings, where human input tends to be higher than chemical and mechanical factors, and where time frames are more likely to be for generations rather than 10-year investment cycles. Worldwide, between 80% and 90% of farms are family or smallholder-owned. But they cover only a small and shrinking part of the land and commercial production.

 

Over the past four decades, the biggest shift from small to big was in the United States and Europe, where ownership is in fewer hands and even individual farmers work under strict contracts for retailers, trading conglomerates and investment funds."

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/24/farmland-inequality-is-rising-around-the-world-finds-report

 

I am not sure how Thailand's huge agro-business and commodity trading monoliths operate inside Thailand or overseas but I looked here to try and find out who the major rice traders are and the only one that mentioned rice was Thai Ha. I would assume that the likes of Thai Ha are maybe one of the businesses that the local farmers sell their harvested product to? Or do they still sell to the local rice mill owner/operators and THEY sell to the likes of Thai Ha?? Or does Thai Ha and the like already own these mills?

 

Maybe with smallholdings going to the wall and selling up, the shift from "small to big" will eventuate in Thailand where the producers will own the product from seed to... seed. I wonder where they will get their labor from?

Edited November 25, 2020 by NanLaew

[IsaanAussie]

1 hour ago, NanLaew said:

find out who the major rice traders are

Start with the Thai rice exporters. Try this site http://www.thairiceexporters.or.th/default_eng.htm

[NanLaew]

1 hour ago, IsaanAussie said:

Start with the Thai rice exporters. Try this site http://www.thairiceexporters.or.th/default_eng.htm

 

Wow! 193 of them.

 

Thanks

[kickstart]

 

5 hours ago, NanLaew said:

Maybe with smallholdings going to the wall and selling up, the shift from "small to big" will eventuate in Thailand where the producers will own the product from seed to... seed. I wonder where they will get their labor from

The producers ,ie the farmers ?own the product ,can not see that the likes of CPF  liking  that, and they will soon muscle in and ,not so much as stopping it ,but making life not easy for they what they will think of as competition .

Where will the labour come from, what labour ,It will be all mechanization it has been happening for some years ,like I said in my last post ,mung beans ,all now havered  by combine ,

No more Hack-Khow -Port, harvesting maize  just harvesting the cobs by hand, and send them to the buyer to thrash out ,like we used to do now all done by combine .

I would say with C-19 finding cutters for cane could be a problem this year ,more cane will be cut by machine .

that is how your one percent operate the 70 % of crop fields, big machinery  low labour costs ,and we all benefit in cheap food .

Where the jury is out, is in Issan will Big Farming  Corporation  Inc try big scale farming in Issan ,I think not ,with poor soil and only one crop a year ,maybe it is  Hom Marley rice ,still think it is not viable for them ,the family farm will continue ,other local  farmers as contactors  will do all the work,  the small scale family farm, they will be just dog and stick farmers. 

[Yellowtail]

On 11/24/2020 at 9:15 PM, kickstart said:

IA remind me not to ask yellowtail to be my financial manager ,with most businesses labour is the most expensive input ,

Our small place we now have the wife's daughter in to help us cut some Napier grass and help chop it for silage ,it is only for a few hours in a day over 7-12 days ,I pay her just those few hours, but it has put 40% on to the cost of making  our silage.

We used to grow mung beans and at the time they were hand-picked , workers were  paid  by per kg  picked, we had local  labour one year we got a 10-15 Cambodians in ,not a good idea  they just picked the easy to get at pods ,not the  ones under the plant ,again  that was a very high percentage on our crop inputs .and the crop still had to be thrashed out by our local mobile thrasher.

Now they are all cut by combine 600 baht/rie job done ,call it progress, and I would say lower input costs.so in the end a bigger bottom line 

The only now  crop entirely harvested by hand is cassava ,that around here is done by a team of Cambodians ,who harvest and haul the crop in their own   Rot Itain, and charge per rie .  

The op grows top fruit . he can not control selling price ,but it stands to reason  it  certainly has a direct effect on  selling his crop,  if his picking costs are lower he is going to make more money on selling his crop .

 

Actually labor is not the most expensive component in most businesses, not even close. 

 

What I said was, what you pay your staff has no direct effect on what you are able to sell your product for. What you've said pretty much supports that. 

[Yellowtail]

As labor costs go up mechanization becomes more viable. As operations become more capital intensive and less reliant on labor they tend to get bigger, and small operations are not able to compete. Farmer goes into debt to buy a combine, a year later he's harvesting his neighbor's crops, ten years later he owns his neighbor's farm. Nothing new about it. 

 

My dad was born in 1912 and he saw the first steam tractor in Fergus County Montana, and in less than ten years there was not a team of horses left working. When I came to Thailand, driving from Bangkok to the plant in Kabinburi,  I would occasionally see someone (I assume) ploughing with buffalo. I haven't seen that in at least ten years.  You can say what you like about big ag, but there a smaller percentage  of the population is starving now than at any other time in the history of the world.

[bodga]

On 11/25/2020 at 3:29 AM, 473geo said:

Your point being? I know many people who have crashed cars, doesn't mean everybody should be prevented from driving.

point  being all the unemployed from the rural  villages  have sold what they could  have gone  back to with no  back  up to  supply an income.

[473geo]

My son has today negotiated10 baht a bale to put in the shed, and his favourite pork BBQ for himself and friends - result, today we will have 100 bales in the shed - My wife will be happy, and the guys will be happy, job done. I believe they will be looking to do our next batch too, in their own time of course, best to leave them to it, learn how to organise themselves, and help each other out with a few baht in the pocket ????

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2020 by 473geo

[bodga]

So Wife advertised and so  far the "hopefuls"  are man and woman , man 26  woman 44 "couple"  want the job but when asked for ID  card  copy dont answer, we check  all  applicants with our  Police friend as dont want any druggies  here, second  lot totally unsuitable for the work security guard and shopgirl, third  lot said they wanted it and will call us later..........havent so  far,   fourth man single was a chef..........unsuitable, 5th  lot is a  man and woman 25ish shes  6  months pregnant hasnt  called  back, all said they needed a  job  some out of work for 4  months...........no takers as  of today.

Advert says what the work is so dont know why half of them even waste their time showing up when they arent suitable.........

[CorpusChristie]

2 minutes ago, bodga said:

So Wife advertised and so  far the "hopefuls"  are man and woman , man 26  woman 44 "couple"  want the job but when asked for ID  card  copy dont answer, we check  all  applicants with our  Police friend as dont want any druggies  here, second  lot totally unsuitable for the work security guard and shopgirl, third  lot said they wanted it and will call us later..........havent so  far,   fourth man single was a chef..........unsuitable, 5th  lot is a  man and woman 25ish shes  6  months pregnant hasnt  called  back, all said they needed a  job  some out of work for 4  months...........no takers as  of today.

Advert says what the work is so dont know why half of them even waste their time showing up when they arent suitable.........

 

  Is it that when they find out the pay and conditions, that they become uninterested ?

[teacherclaire]

On 11/21/2020 at 10:21 AM, bodga said:

So  have had my land now for 8  years, staff were easy to find way back then, generally  Burmese, Thais dont want to do  this work on the land.

Ive noticed in the last 4-5  years more and more fields are being abandoned become overgrown etc, and staff are  getting harder to find and are  more lazy.

It doesnt matter what you pay, it doesnt matter what you give them in extra benefits such as free  electric, water ,  motorbike,  house etc etc.

Wife has spoken to a few  more people round here with farms and they all say the same, no one wants to work  on the land, even though many have no  jobs  now they will  not work on the land.

It pains me to sell up but it is  what it is, Im looking forwards to  maybe getting a life back instead of the constant worry of staff leaving at the drop of a  hat or just sitting doing very  little.

So here is the warning for  those thinking of  getting some land and growing anything, forget it, no one wants to work on the land anymore.

Perhaps pot is the plant to grow now? Isn't that legal now?

 

I'm sure you'll find many customers. 

 

Joke aside, that's really sad when people prefer to sit on their ar-e without having anything. Is that Thainess? Or stupidity? 

[Yellowtail]

2 hours ago, bodga said:

So Wife advertised and so  far the "hopefuls"  are man and woman , man 26  woman 44 "couple"  want the job but when asked for ID  card  copy dont answer, we check  all  applicants with our  Police friend as dont want any druggies  here, second  lot totally unsuitable for the work security guard and shopgirl, third  lot said they wanted it and will call us later..........havent so  far,   fourth man single was a chef..........unsuitable, 5th  lot is a  man and woman 25ish shes  6  months pregnant hasnt  called  back, all said they needed a  job  some out of work for 4  months...........no takers as  of today.

Advert says what the work is so dont know why half of them even waste their time showing up when they arent suitable.........

 

Why would a security guard, a shop girl or a pregnant woman for that matter not be able to stand in the shade watering?

[473geo]

5 hours ago, teacherclaire said:

Perhaps pot is the plant to grow now? Isn't that legal now?

 

I'm sure you'll find many customers. 

 

Joke aside, that's really sad when people prefer to sit on their ar-e without having anything. Is that Thainess? Or stupidity? 

Well I guess that depends on your point of view.

 

Would you believe there are people who leave home at  7am, in a vehicle they have bought, run and maintain, to go to work, buy expensive lunch as have no time to prepare anything, as they return home at 7pm in the evening, when they eat and have an hour of leisure time before bed.

 

Then there are Thai rural folk grow most of their own food, do a bit of occasional work to pay for a few luxuries and can sit in the sun all day and chat, maybe even a little siesta, always free for the parties.

 

Perhaps the Thai rural folk have a differing view on stupidity........ ???? 

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by 473geo

[teacherclaire]

4 hours ago, 473geo said:

Well I guess that depends on your point of view.

 

Would you believe there are people who leave home at  7am, in a vehicle they have bought, run and maintain, to go to work, buy expensive lunch as have no time to prepare anything, as they return home at 7pm in the evening, when they eat and have an hour of leisure time before bed.

 

Then there are Thai rural folk grow most of their own food, do a bit of occasional work to pay for a few luxuries and can sit in the sun all day and chat, maybe even a little siesta, always free for the parties.

 

Perhaps the Thai rural folk have a differing view on stupidity........ ???? 

 

   A great view. Perhaps we should ( I) change and do not care about certain values that we follow since birth?

 

 

[robblok]

On 11/24/2020 at 9:15 PM, kickstart said:

IA remind me not to ask yellowtail to be my financial manager ,with most businesses labour is the most expensive input ,

Our small place we now have the wife's daughter in to help us cut some Napier grass and help chop it for silage ,it is only for a few hours in a day over 7-12 days ,I pay her just those few hours, but it has put 40% on to the cost of making  our silage.

We used to grow mung beans and at the time they were hand-picked , workers were  paid  by per kg  picked, we had local  labour one year we got a 10-15 Cambodians in ,not a good idea  they just picked the easy to get at pods ,not the  ones under the plant ,again  that was a very high percentage on our crop inputs .and the crop still had to be thrashed out by our local mobile thrasher.

Now they are all cut by combine 600 baht/rie job done ,call it progress, and I would say lower input costs.so in the end a bigger bottom line 

The only now  crop entirely harvested by hand is cassava ,that around here is done by a team of Cambodians ,who harvest and haul the crop in their own   Rot Itain, and charge per rie .  

The op grows top fruit . he can not control selling price ,but it stands to reason  it  certainly has a direct effect on  selling his crop,  if his picking costs are lower he is going to make more money on selling his crop .

Actually you got it wrong and Yellowtail got it right. I know farmers are not really economically schooled. But its supply and demand that shows you what you can sell your product for. It does not really matter how much you paid for labor if the market wont pay you more for your product then that is it.

 

So while it is your biggest cost its not going to influence your sales price. Unless you are the only one selling and then you can increase your price. Its up to farmers to produce the products for the price the market demands. If they can't its their loss or they should all up their prices. However the big land owners probably have a lower price of labor and thus can sell cheaper making it hard for those with high cost to make money.

 

While it is true that cost price is dictated by labor costs and others cost price and sales price are not the same. 

[bodga]

12 hours ago, CorpusChristie said:

 

  Is it that when they find out the pay and conditions, that they become uninterested ?

The  pay and conditions are in the advert which they see before they arrive.

Yesterdays last  couple seemed interested and would  call us  later......didnt , Wife  called them to check and the boy  said have to speak to his   Wife, Wife  said   we  dont have a truck to  move our things from our  house to your  house so cant work for you. they  live within 4  km of  here.........comical, why dont they just straight up say we dont want the  job, they waste  so  much of their own and our  time.

[bodga]

10 hours ago, Yellowtail said:

 

Why would a security guard, a shop girl or a pregnant woman for that matter not be able to stand in the shade watering?

You tell me?

[bodga]

12 hours ago, teacherclaire said:

Perhaps pot is the plant to grow now? Isn't that legal now?

 

I'm sure you'll find many customers. 

 

Joke aside, that's really sad when people prefer to sit on their ar-e without having anything. Is that Thainess? Or stupidity? 

Its  laziness and the  willingness of other family  member to bail them out continually.

[bodga]

7 hours ago, 473geo said:

Then there are Thai rural folk grow most of their own food,

Actually many of them DONT anymore, they all go  out and  buy food  in the mornings round here, including most of the people  we have had work for us.......the one with a  child  continually  was  buying doughnuts, biscuits, sweets  etc, never  saw  her  not eating, initially they grew  some vegetables  but then abandoned them. rarely  have staff actually grown anything for themselves despite  having concrete rings 1  metre  diameter filled with  soil to grow  stuff  in.

[HashBrownHarry]

On 11/21/2020 at 11:21 AM, Scouse123 said:

No.

They all want to work in Global or Homepro so they can sit on their asses all day taking selfies and playing Facebook.

 

If they have no work, they are not embarrassed just to beg people and the famous " borrow but get angry if people ask for it back " routine.

 

Just <deleted>, many of whom don't even finish high school.

This sums it up perfectly.

[HashBrownHarry]

On 11/21/2020 at 1:03 PM, Yellowtail said:

Yes, it's shocking that people do not want to work hard outside in the hot sun when they can earn the same money somewhere else. 

A lot of these unskilled workers are unable to find work elsewhere, they will not get work in Global house / Thai Watsadu / 7 or the likes coz they have zero qualifications, they're normally just rice peasants and the outdoor work is all they're capable of.

 

 

[HashBrownHarry]

On 11/21/2020 at 1:52 PM, Yellowtail said:

 

500 a day is 15K a month for full time work.

I'd be surprised at anyone willing to work every single day!

[HashBrownHarry]

On 11/21/2020 at 4:50 PM, AaronC76 said:

To the op, ask yourself if you would do the work for the wages you offer? If not then you have your answer, simple.

you're comparing apples to oranges, he has ( or had ) more options of work in his life, they have no option ( other than to do nothing, which they don't seem to mind ).

[Enzian]

27 minutes ago, bodga said:

Its  laziness and the  willingness of other family  member to bail them out continually.

My girlfriend has to minimize time in her family farm/village area because if she has anything in her pocket, other family members, particularly the young, are constantly hitting her up for it, and badmouth her if she doesn't comply, so she has to stay in Bangkok to have anything.