| Author | Eathipol Srisawaluck |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no. HS-88-30 |
| Subject(s) | Land reform--Thailand
|
| Note | A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for t he Award of the Degree of Master of Science, School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Thesis ; no. HS-88-30 |
| Abstract | The major objective of agricultural land reform in Thailand is to
solve the problem of tenancy and landlessness through acquiring land
suitable for agriculture from absentee landlords, or through allocating
public land to farmers in need, either on a rental or on a hire-purchase
basis. Providing land ownership to each farmer is the ultimate purpose
of land reform. After several years of land reform implementation it
became evident that its goal could hardly ever be realized, because only
a minority of tenant farmers in the land reform area had been interested
in hire-purchasing the land they till. Moreover, some of those farmers
who had erstwhile hire-purchased land renounced their hire-purchasing
contracts later-on. This study found out that the major reasons stated
by both tenants and renouncers for rejecting or for renouncing
hire-purchasing contracts included sizes of land allocated being too
small for earning a livelihood, poor soil and implicit low productivity,
and consequently low income as well as indebtedness. This failure was also
due to the fact that land allocated by the Agricultural Land Reform Office
(ALRO) to farmer5 was identical with plots that farmers had rented from
private landowners until the time of land reform implementation. Some
of these old tenants had never paid any rent to the former landowners for
extended periods, owing to constraints imposed by nature or sheer
deliberate evasion of payment. These farmers found it difficult to enter
into any type of formal contract that would oblige them to make regular
payments. In the absence of any adequate infrastructure development,
without any sound measure of financial assistance, and lacking any
suitable models of farm management, farmers who had switched from tenant
to landowner status under the ALRO strategy for creating land ownership
through hire-purchasing had ;.iot experienced any tangible change of their
socio-economic condition. The study includes specific recommendations
for measures to promote the acceptance and adoption of hire-purchasing
and for strengthening farmers' ability to generate higher income from
their own land in the long run. |
| Year | 1988 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. HS-88-30 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Other Field of Studies (No Department) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Human Settlement (HS) |
| Chairperson(s) | Weber, Karl E. |
| Examination Committee(s) | Demaine, Harvey ;Gonzales, Jr. R. L. |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Agricultura l Land Reform Office,
Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives
Roya l Thai Government; |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1988 |