Largest orange farm in Chiang Mai now seized for land reform

[Shot]

[fruitman]

49 minutes ago, Loaded said:

These people started growing oranges on land that nobody else wanted and nobody else owned. It was unused mountain land. This went on for many years without a single complaint from anyone. The army has now decided that they should receive revenue from this land rather that the people who developed it - shades of Robert Mugabe.

 

So Einstein, can i use every piece of land nobody else wanted/owns?

[MESmith]

4 minutes ago, fruitman said:

 

So Einstein, can i use every piece of land nobody else wanted/owns?

 You have to start wondering if somebody on this forum grows oranges 

[metisdead]

Profane and inflammatory posts and replies have been removed. 

[jb5music]

By all means. Rip out the Orange groves and replace them with more hundreds of little football field rectangle crops you see on google satellite that weren't there 5 years ago?... that our little neanderthal pyro "not big believers" BURN to clear? Christopher Columbus hasn't been born yet and Earth is flat.... goes on forever. Rip out the land 'raping' Orange groves. Yup. Some smart ones in these parts.

[thaiguzzi]

Lot more to it.

Notice it is in the NW. Not central, nor the South. Notice the new head of the agri dept. A "General" so and so. This is just about new boys in town (pigs at the trough), markers being put down etc etc. Payback one day will be very, very messy. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with land reform or poor landless farmers. As a prior poster put it, what exactly is a farmer if he has no land to farm?

[Johpa]

I remember this land before it became a corporate orchard. It was unused scrub land. Not much water for irrigation without a large capital investment. And I believe this was the land that was at the center of the murder of kamnaan Seng of tambon (subdistrict) Thaton almost 30 years ago. This is also the region where Laota and his family ruled the roost. This may just be more fallout from Laota's arrest.


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[gk10002000]

18 hours ago, alant said:

At a loss to see how this works.

OK take land away because they can't prove it is theirs and it was possibly "acquired" by doubtful means but what then?

Owners and workers out of work and possibly homeless? Give to landless farmers, what are landless farmers and then does the land given to them become theirs? do they get papers?

What happens in the meanwhile? what happens to the oranges do they go to the army? Just what does "For their orange production this year, he made clear that another round of would be held."

 

Just trying to make sense of it all...

yeah and then in a few years the same thing will happen as some new military coup will invalidate or not recognize any land claims as they see fit.

[Sooo Upto Me]

On 22/12/2016 at 7:07 PM, gdgbb said:

 

The land will not be restored to forest, in order to protect 300 workers' livelihoods the ALRO is taking over the orchards as a co-operative.

???

[alant]

19 hours ago, fleur3 said:

just start at the beginning: they stole the land.  The rest is nonsense.  Compare with the following. Burglars broke in my house and stole one million pound. They used the money to start a business. The business is doing well but i want my money back,.So end of the business. Your philosophy: what a pity let them keep the money !

So fleur3 you know my philosophy? You PRESUME that because I ask questions to get more of an idea that I am pro criminal. That is not the case but at it seems from your post you would like it to be so you should not expect sympathy from me if you do get robbed.

[Grubster]

On 12/22/2016 at 7:07 PM, gdgbb said:

 

The land will not be restored to forest, in order to protect 300 workers' livelihoods the ALRO is taking over the orchards as a co-operative.

Yes that would be nice if the 300 workers actually own the land as a co-op, since it was gained illegaly by the current operator. I am a little afraid that a big shot from the ALRO may skim all the profits and just leave the workers with minimum wage though. Hope not.

[mogoso]

On 12/22/2016 at 10:37 PM, AlQaholic said:

I am a little bit confused, If you are a farmer, by definition you would have a "farm". The definition of a farm in my mind is a plot of land where the farmer can cultivate the land and produce farm products.

 

Soooooo where did these "landless" farmers come from? If you gamble away your land or loose your land in some other way for example to the Creditors or sell your land, then you are not a farmer anymore.

 

Can I just raise my hand and say "I'm a landless farmer!"?

There are many landless farmers. My wife has owned, for longer than I've known her, rice paddies which she rents out to be farmed yearly. She gives the money to her mom. They cannot grow a second rice crop as a nitrogen fixer must be planted between crops. Other than that she has little say what they do. But in the true sense of the word they are landless farmers. In the US they'd be called share croppers

 

[gdgbb]

22 hours ago, Loaded said:

These people started growing oranges on land that nobody else wanted and nobody else owned. It was unused mountain land. This went on for many years without a single complaint from anyone. The army has now decided that they should receive revenue from this land rather that the people who developed it - shades of Robert Mugabe.

That's just wrong, it was allocated for farmers to use without the option for selling it on.  No complaints were received for years because the land was being used as it was intended to be, before the orchard owners bought it illegally from the farmers.

 

The Army has not decided anything that will give it benefits, the ALRO has decided to take back the illegally used land but instead of throwing 300 workers on the scrap heap it is forming a co-operative to help those employees which it has the authority to do.

[gdgbb]

9 hours ago, Sooo Upto Me said:

???

Problem?

[gdgbb]

3 hours ago, Grubster said:

Yes that would be nice if the 300 workers actually own the land as a co-op, since it was gained illegaly by the current operator. I am a little afraid that a big shot from the ALRO may skim all the profits and just leave the workers with minimum wage though. Hope not.

Well, as the ALRO owns or has government approved control of it, what they do with it is their decision.  Minimum wage or not, you don't know what wages will be paid and every government job is not paid at the legal minimum, ALRO would have been within their rights to sack them all but it didn't.

[Sooo Upto Me]

1 hour ago, gdgbb said:

Problem?

Yes trying to make sense of ur post.

[AlQaholic]

4 hours ago, mogoso said:

There are many landless farmers. My wife has owned, for longer than I've known her, rice paddies which she rents out to be farmed yearly. She gives the money to her mom. They cannot grow a second rice crop as a nitrogen fixer must be planted between crops. Other than that she has little say what they do. But in the true sense of the word they are landless farmers. In the US they'd be called share croppers

 

Ohhh, this is news to me, thanks for the info. I thought nobody would want to farm voluntarily unless they own some land, wow. After all it is really not the best way to earn an income if you don't have land, but on the other hand maybe that is all they know how to do, so no choice for them. But why these people should have the automatic right to receive land beats me.....and as I understand the land in question is not suitable for rice farming, so if you are a rice farmer the land will be of little value....

[fish monger]

Does anyone know how long it takes for an orange tree to grow to the point of it bearing fruit.....? A long damn time. They just noticed all these trees....? So the military takes over the land, they give it to homeless farmers and the next thing we'll see are little ugly resorts popping up all over. Hey...When they cut down all those beautiful trees, can they send me a half dozen lower ends of the trees...? I need to make a few wooden block planes, chisel handles and other things....

[NancyL]

13 hours ago, AlQaholic said:

Ohhh, this is news to me, thanks for the info. I thought nobody would want to farm voluntarily unless they own some land, wow. After all it is really not the best way to earn an income if you don't have land, but on the other hand maybe that is all they know how to do, so no choice for them. But why these people should have the automatic right to receive land beats me.....and as I understand the land in question is not suitable for rice farming, so if you are a rice farmer the land will be of little value....

Gosh, yes, sharecropping is a very standard practice, not just here but elsewhere in the world.  Hubby and I were on the other side of sharecropping.  

 

We had a greenhouse/nursery business in the U.S. on a farm where we lived and didn't need to use all the land we owned.  So, we made the land available to other farmers in the area for sharecropping.  They paid us a fairly small amount of money each year and in turn had access to the land to plant crops that they got to keep.  They used their equipment and manpower to plant, cultivate and harvest the crops.  It worked because they lived fairly close and it was easy for them to access our fields.  We benefited because they kept the fields under cultivation and permitted us to keep tax status on that real estate as a farm and to keep the land from reverting back to scrub.  

 

It worked very well until one year when the price dropped out of the soybean market and we had a wet fall with bad field conditions, so the farmer tending the soybean field decided not to harvest the crop.  The soybeans attracted a lot of rodents who found their way into our greenhouses and overwintering nursery stock for the winter.

 

Typical of these things, there never was a written contract or even "an understanding" about details like getting the crop out of the field at the end of the season.

[hml367]

Not suggesting support for one side or the other. However, the way Thais (and Asians) look at land ownership may not be the same perspective as Westerners.

Some history on land ownership by Thais  :  

Land.pdf

[hml367]

After the tsunami in 2004 (anniversary tomorrow ??)  there were problems in Phuket I believe on the beach properties as to ownership and whether businesses that were there before the tsunami were owned by the businesses or not.

[NancyL]

4 hours ago, hml367 said:

Not suggesting support for one side or the other. However, the way Thais (and Asians) look at land ownership may not be the same perspective as Westerners.

Some history on land ownership by Thais  :  

Land.pdf

 

Don't doubt at all that there are differences.  Unfortunately, your document isn't available for public viewing.  Is there another way to make it available?

[hml367]

10 minutes ago, NancyL said:

 

Don't doubt at all that there are differences.  Unfortunately, your document isn't available for public viewing.  Is there another way to make it available?

you must be signed into ThaiVisa to download rhe file. At least that is how it works for me.

[NancyL]

48 minutes ago, hml367 said:

you must be signed into ThaiVisa to download rhe file. At least that is how it works for me.

Umm, think about your comment for a moment.  

 

Someone has to be signed into ThaiVisa in order to post.  The fact I'm posting would indicate I'm signed in.  There seems to be another problem.

[hml367]

34 minutes ago, NancyL said:

Umm, think about your comment for a moment.  

 

Someone has to be signed into ThaiVisa in order to post.  The fact I'm posting would indicate I'm signed in.  There seems to be another problem.

NancyL,

I can, at times, not be signed into ThaiVisa, then when I want to download something I signin.  That doesn't mean I am always signed in.  I sign out when I am done.

 

This particular file I cannot download if I am not signed in to ThaiVisa.  When I sign into ThaiVisa I can download the file.

 

I doubt this file would show in a post because it is 25 pages long in full form.

 

The name of the document is, "Rights of the Thai People to the Land Ownership During the Reign of King Rama II-V*", and is authored by Kanitha Chitchang.  Maybe you can search the internet for that.  I cannot change how ThaiVisa works.

EDIT:::  try this  http://www.journal.su.ac.th/index.php/suij/article/viewFile/8/6  

 

I searched for the file and came up with that link.

 

[CaliTransplant]

Great hit the land steeling bastards. 
But with all that land at least some of if could be restored to natural forest again.

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[Beats56]

On 23/12/2016 at 1:26 PM, elgordo38 said:

Rather makes sense why destroy all them mature trees. 

I agree. Why not open it to the public and have a pick your own. Pay for the oranges when your done. 

 

[elgordo38]

1 hour ago, Beats56 said:

I agree. Why not open it to the public and have a pick your own. Pay for the oranges when your done. 

 

Great ideas never seem to come to fruitation here. It always seems to be bulldozers at the ready. 

[Sooo Upto Me]

24 minutes ago, gdgbb said:

 

You're getting a little confused in a badly failing attempt to be a psycho-analyst  and the only thing going deeper is the hole you're digging for yourself.   You seem to be the the one with an apparent comprehension problem, if you try to recall, you had difficulty understanding a perfectly lucid comment I made about workers' livelihoods being preserved by the ALRO.

 

Listen, the only one getting confused with ur little brain is u. Being sarcastic with ur pathetic comments will get u no where with me. 

Try it on with someone else on TVF or better still go bac on ur bar stool in soi 6

[Mousehound]

On ‎23‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 5:39 PM, Loaded said:

These people started growing oranges on land that nobody else wanted and nobody else owned. It was unused mountain land. This went on for many years without a single complaint from anyone. The army has now decided that they should receive revenue from this land rather that the people who developed it - shades of Robert Mugabe.

If you read earlier posts you will see there were plenty of complaints and these were made public.  Nothing happened because of the corruption at the time.  The military is actually taking the action that should have occurred years ago.