Agricultural land abandonment in Thailand

Abstract

Thai farmers' poverty stems from several factors such as falling crop prices, high input costs for crop production, shortage of cash for investment, erratic rainfall distribution and all types of land use problems such as landlessness, land rights, land infrastructure and land fragmentation. Although the government has implemented several legislative actions and programs to address these problems, Thai farmers remain largely poor and severe poverty is visible in the form of agricultural land abandonment. Therefore, studying the causes of land abandonment will reflect the causes of poverty and the effectiveness of government agricultural policies. Although the issue of agricultural land abandonment has drawn a lot of attention, rigorous quantification studies are rarely attempted. The objective of this research is to identify the factors that cause agricultural land abandonment and the appropriate policy measures for effectively addressing the problem. The study area is Khon-Kaen Province where a total of 808 agricultural parcel samples were selected for this study. This study utilizes the optimization method based on duality production theory to derive input demand, output supply and land allocation equations. The Simultaneous Tobit estimation was used to estimate the system of nine equations. The study identified the major contributing factors for land abandonment as follows: agricultural machinery prices, followed by semi-right of property right, pesticide price, full right of property right, sugarcane prices, land rental laws, water supply, soil quality, parcel size, and distance to city. Based on the findings, this study recommends the following policies (1) land infrastructure development; (2) limited holding size; (3) community title deeds; (4) agricultural zoning and (5) price subsidy programs with certain adjustments. The existing land rental laws need to be revised while land allocation programs, debt moratorium projects, adverse possession laws and reform of land and property tax act are inconclusive policies. An implication for farmers based on this study is to recognize that the factor behind their poverty do not come from the lack of property right over the land. In addition, they should consider putting more concern in the water supply and soil quality management, finding most appropriate crop for small plot production as well as take advantage of the Agricultural Land Rental Act of 1981 trough leasing process.