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โครงการหนังสืออิเล็กทรอนิกส์ด้านการเกษตร เฉลิมพระเกียรติพระบาทสมเด็จพระเจ้าอยู่หัว

These land-use changes have important ecological implications. While the government
has heavily invested in improving agricultural infrastructure within irrigated areas, so that they
are suitable for farming, these areas have been used for non-agricultural purposes, such as
housing, factories, resorts, golf courses, and roads. This is essentially a loss of fertile farmland. On
the other hand, steep and mountainous areas have been cultivated for growing corn for animal
feed, rubber, and oil palm, without conserving soil and water resources and improving soil quality.
This has often resulted in soil erosion and landslides. Such practices are obviously against the
basic principle of sustainable agricultural land use.

In terms of land tenure, even though various government agencies have implemented
policies and measures to redistribute land ownership, they have so far been able to provide only
43.2 million rais of land to 2.7 million farmers. There are still 421,321 farmers who are registered
as those without land ownership and 403,321 farmers who are registered as landless. In terms of
land tenancy, a total area of 29 milllionrais are rented to farmers, accounting for about 20 percent
of the total agricultural land, despite that the government still controls land rental for farming.

Due to climate change, the frequent occurrence of floods and droughts continue to affect
agricultural land use, particularly in terms of water shortage for agricultural production. Currently
there is a shortage of about 48,961 million cubic meters.

As for managing farmland, Thai farmers are well aware in preventing deterioration of soil
quality, as they continue to improve the soil by using both chemical and organic fertilizers. They
generally allow government agencies to set up land and water conservation systems. They also
grow vetiver grass by themselves, as well as investing in building wells on their land. They also
participate in the government’s large-scale farmland projects to reduce costs and increase
revenues. A key challenge is how to reduce the areas for growing crops that continue to have
lower prices. This is a key issue that the government has to campaign for. More than 53.1 percent
of famers constantly face natural disasters, especially floods and droughts. Even though only a
small number of farmers say they plan to sell their agricultural land, the research found empirical
evidence showing that a number of farmers in the surveyed provinces had sold their land for non-
agricultural activities. Another problem is that as many as 78 percent of the farmers have high
debt, which is against the basic five principles mentioned earlier.

The problems in managing agricultural land in Thailand cover a wide range of complicated
and complex issues, including land-use problems, land tenure problems, productivity problems,
and loss of agricultural land to non-agricultural uses, deterioration of soil quality and ecosystems,
floods and droughts. These problems all affect the quality of life of famers directly.

Such problems can be attributed to several factors, including population growth,
economic expansion, public policies in terms of spatial development and agricultural production,
climate change, land deterioration, prices of agricultural products, farmers’ income, lack of
national land use plans, lack of organizations that monitor and control agricultural land, lack of
measures that support agricultural land use, inadequate information systems for efficient
agricultural production. As such, management of agricultural land in Thailand has not aligned with
the basic five principles mentioned earlier.

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