Gov. Pulls Rug Out From Under Rice Farmers Feet

[chownah]

In contrast to what you suggest Chownah, Thai farmers’ welcome the opportunity to “mechanise”.

Why?

Because historically rice farmers have had to rely on “free” family labour, which could otherwise be freed to seek gainful/paid employment elsewhere, contributing to the family income – an income which is more and more restricted not because of mechanisation, but because it is low yielding, and labour intensive.

Every year we hire a group of women to transplant the rice seedlings out into the fields. They make over two times as much and sometimes three times as much money in one day as they can make doing anything else......I don't think these farmers would benefit if I mechanised and bought a planting machine.

There is a group of women who pick makua at a large farm in Loei Province and I don't think that they would benefit if their boss devised a mechanical makua picking machine.

Mechanization does benefit some farmers but it also puts alot of other farmers out of work. The farmers who are put out of work are usually those who have the least opportunity or skills to obtain other employment.

<edited by RC>

Chownah

Edited November 6, 2006 by RamdomChances

[Maizefarmer]

With respect to the statement quoted from that accompanied this posting before it was a edited by the moderator, the author has since on a number of occassions revised his position to some degree.

While it would be true that the original argument is not without merit it would be equaly inaccurate to use it as an argument to support the continuation of manual labour in any sector (not only agriculture) at the long term expense of efficiency & profitability. Overall a balance has to be found, that most certainly is true, but the argument has be to be taken further than that simple conclusion.

This is inparticular with respect to the long term overall developemtn of the ag industry in Thailand. To stand still on mechanisation and efficiency fronts would be to deal the industry a death blow which ultimately would serve to damage the very people it set out to protect in the first place. The situation will eventually become so bad and distorted that the market (in any capacity except subsitance and personal consumption) will collapse.

Rural folk, like or not need to be willing to adapt and change to the market immaterial of how they may feel about it - and that is official government policy nowadays i.e. rural folk at some point have to accept that should they wish to sustain their rural lifestyles they need to broaden their skills and what they can offer the industry.

That means that while some will fall into a group that because of age, ability or some other circumstance "they will miss the boat", those that come aftre them will be born into a rural enviroment that is very different to what their ancestors experianced. One could take the argument to the extreme and argue quite strongly for the maintenenace of buffalo to plough the paddies. Th efact of the matter is that as soon as the mechanised buffao came along, most Thai's couldn;t wait to get their hands on one. And so to will the time come when some genration not to far off from us will look back on the efficiency of the current 2 wheel tractors and farming practises in much the same light as we now look back on the days of buffalo working the paddies.

Change wil take place - rightly or wrongly and whether or not they are liked. With that in mind those who wish to maintain their rural lifestyles are going to have to consider how best they can move forward with those changes. And I am not talking about mechanisation as a standalone change. No , I am talking about productivity as a whole - and everything that goes with that productivity increase.

Asia's population will close on double within the next 50 years - it will double.

In conjunction with what is going to be an almost absolute garuntee that climatic changes will reduce the amount of overall cultivatable land to somewhere around half to two thirds what it currently is (at best), somewhere along the line agricultural productivity per unit of cultivatable land is going to have to increase dramatricaly. To say it is going to have to double would not be an exageration.

I think not withstanding any other considerations the certainties of the above paragraph are by themselves sufficient reason to kick arse when it comes to the subject of efficency and productivity in the ag industry.

Its a fast changing world - and it wil be a very different one by the time our kids get to our age.

Tim

[teletiger]

The population of Bangkok is estimated to double by the year 2020.(Bangkok post report) Most of these people will come in from the rural areas. This is to say nothing of other cities in Thailand. Urbanization is a global phenomenon, as far back as the U.K. after WW1. Thailand has got to come to terms with this fact. The romantic idea of small farmers being self sufficient and feeding the nation and being the backbone of a country are dreams. It's not what the people want. Farmers children "see" a better life and move on. Who can blame them given their govern........I'll save RC the trouble and delete the following rant myself.

If you live up-country, look around you. Many of your neighbours will be 50/60...with 50/100 rai of land. Mango orchards well past their sell by date, maybe maize fields continuously cropped these twenty years that have lost 30cm+ of topsoil. Just check a few trees in the fields. Are they up on mounds? That was ground level 10 years ago. The only particular abundance in this harvest will be casualties. Khun Yai and Lung's only choice will be to sell out, because the kids don't want to know.

Better to accept the reality and go foreward from there. Sorry if it sounds depressing, but there's good stories in there too.

Regards

[Maizefarmer]

TT - you are bang on the mark, detailing real incidents of the point I was trying to raise.

But - someone is going to have to produce food, and with the population growing exponentially so to will the requirment will food.

AS sure as the sun rises every day so to will there be a need for farming for the foreseeable future.

Someone will have to do it, and those who want to do it or want to preserve their rural lifestyles based on ag production are just going to have to get their act together.

Tim

[chownah]

Just an "intentionally pedantic" side note: Around where I live you see trees out in the rice fields and they are up on mounds and it is not form the erosion of the fields....it is because they are at the level of the ground before the land was flattened into rice paddy. By looking at the height of the mound you can get an idea as to where the original land elevation was before conversion to rice paddy.

But maybe in some areas this is a marker for erosion...I don't know. Erosion is not a good thing and should be reduced or eliminated. One of the best ways to reduce erosion is to use organic farming practices.

Chownah

Edited November 8, 2006 by chownah

[chownah]

This topic was about how the price for rice was going to be bad this year....but the price for khow gniew was exceptionally good at 9.5 baht per kg which is almost 50% more than last year...and last year was up from the year before.....so what gives?.......why the high price for khow gniew......the rumor is that the gov't has some big contracts to sell rice but I'm considering this to be just a rumor. Anyone know anything about why the high price......everyone around here has got big smiles and pockets full of money.

Chownah