Thailand's Rice Bowl : Perspectives on Agricultural and Social Change In
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Studies in Contemporary Thailand No. 12 Thailand's Rice Bowl Studies in Contemporary Thailand Edited by Prof. Erik Cohen, Sociology Department, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1. Thai Society in Contemporary Perspective by Erik Cohen 2 The Rise and Fall of the Thai Absolute Monarchy by Chaiyan Rajchagool 3. Making Revolution: Insurgency of the Communist Party of Thailand in Structural Perspective by Tom Marks 4. Thai Tourism: Hill Tribes, Islands and Open-Ended Prostitution by Erik Cohen 5. Whose Place is this? Malay Rubber Producers and Thai Government Officials in Yala by Andrew Cornish 6. Central Authority and Local Democratization in Thailand: A Case Study from Chachoengsao Province by Michael H. Nelson 7. Traditional T'ai arts in Contemporary Perspective by Michael C. Howard, Wattana Wattanapun & Alec Gordon 8. Fishermen No More? Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Villages by Olli-Pekka Ruohomaki 9. The Chinese Vegetarian Festival in Phuket: Religion, Ethnicity, and Tourism on a Southern Thai Island by Erik Cohen 10.The Politics of Ruin and the Business of Nostalgia by Maurizio Peleggi 11.Environmental Protection and Rural Development in Thailand: Challenges and Opportunities by PhiIip Dearden (editor) Studies in Contemporary Thailand No. 12 Series Editor: Erik Cohen Thailand's Rice Bowl Perspectives on Agricultural and Social Change in the Chao Phraya Delta Francois Molle Thippawal Srijantr editors White Lotus Press ,,,lg,,! )~., I.""·,;,J,,, ';'~";' ;,., :Jt",{,·k'i";'<"H""~'1 Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr are affiliated to, respectively: Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); 213 rue Lafayette 75480 Paris CEDEX IO, France. Website: www.ird.fr Kasetsart University; 50 Phahonyothin Road, Chatuchak, Bangkok, I0900, Thailand. Website: www.ku.ac.th © 2003 Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr. All rights reserved White Lotus Co., Ltd. GPO Box 1141 Bangkok I05 I I Thailand Telephone: (662) 332-4915 and (662) 741-6288-9 Fax: (662) 741-6607 and (662) 741-6287 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://thailine.com/lotus Printed in Thailand Typeset by COMSET Limited Partnership ISBN: 974-4800-25-9 Contents Foreword VU Preface XI Introduction Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr 2 Knowledge in the making: a brief retrospective of village-level studies in the Chao Phraya Delta during the 20th century Francois Molle II 3 Ethnic groups in the central plain of Thailand: the setting of a mosaic Jean Baffie 37 4 Between concentration and fragmentation: the resilience of the land system in the Chao Phraya Delta Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr 77 5 Dynamics of rice farming in the Chao Phraya Delta: a case study of three villages in Suphan Buri province Somporn Isvilanonda and Mahabub Hossain 109 6 Agrarian transformations in the Chao Phraya Delta: a case study in tambon Thung Luk Nok Thippawal Srijantr 125 7 Fruits and vegetables in Thailand's rice bowl: the agricultural development of poldered raised bed systems in the Damnoen Saduak area Blandine Cheyroux 157 v 8 Socio-economic and environmental implications of inland shrimp farming in the Chao Phraya Delta Brian W Szuster; Francois Molle, Mark Flaherty, and Thippawal Srijantr 177 9 Government policy and farmers' decision-making: the agricul tural diversification programme for the Chao Phraya River Basin (1993-95) revisited Siriluck Sirisup and H. DetlefKammeier 195 10 Allocating and accessing water resources: practice and ideology in the Chao Phraya River Basin Francois Molle 229 11 Lan Laem from 1980 to 1996: profile of a rice growing village in Nakhon Pathom province Atsushi Kitahara 267 12 The cultural factor in rural-urban fringe transformation: land, live lihood, and inheritance in western Nonthaburi Marc Askew 287 13 Social structure and local organisations in the Chao Phraya Delta Shin 'ichi Shigetomi 323 14 Chachoengsao: democratising local government? Michael H. Nelson 345 15 Agrarian versus mercantile deltas: the Chao Phraya Delta in the context of the great deltas of monsoon Asia Yoshihiro Kaida 373 Bibliography 393 Glossary 439 Appendix: Maps 440 Authors 449 vi Foreword Kasetsart University and the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD) jointly implemented the research project Agrarian dynamics and water management in the central plain ofThailand during the 1994-2001 period. This project was a multidisciplinary endeavour aimed at investigating the evolution of agriculture in the Chao Phraya Delta. It later included a comparison with the Red River and Mekong Deltas. Most chapters in this collection are the fruit of both this project and the International Conference, Thailand's Rice Bowl: Perspectives on Agricultural and Social Change in the Chao Phraya Delta, organised in December 2000 by Kasetsart University, IRD, the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute, and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. Eight of the fifteen chapters are revised versions of papers presented at this conference, while the remaining seven are original contributions. The chapters of this volume benefited from the suggestions and comments from several persons who are gratefully acknowledged, notably Charles Mehl, Utong Prasasvinitchai, Chaiwat Prechawit, lonathan Rigg, and Peter Vandergeest. Last but not least, we are very much indebted to Chris Baker for his careful reading and correction of the final manuscript. Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr vii Preface The half-century after the Second World War has seen enormous changes throughout rural Thailand, nowhere more so than in the central plains. Uniquely among the various regions of Thailand, the dominant propeller of change was the increased control over water, which brought in train the introduction of high-yielding varieties, changes in cropping patterns towards higher-valued crops and shrimp farming. This kind of change entails quite a complex process of social adjustment certainly more so than that entailed by, say, a greater exposure to markets, a process that the central plains had almost completed well before the Second World War. And we have not yet mentioned the intrusion of the industrial sector which was drawing labour rapidly from farming, the traditional mainstay of people in the Central Plains. Unlike other regions of Thailand, particularly the politically sensitive northeast, the changes that took place in the central plains are not well documented. People in Bangkok are certainly well aware of what was going on, and perhaps for that reason never felt the need to explore in depth the changes that were taking place almost in front of their eyes. Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr at the DORAS (Development Oriented Research on Agrarian Systems) Center deserve our gratitude for assembling a great amount of data and for conducting detailed research which throws new light on developments occurring in the central plains. Detailed perusal of this volume and a large number of previously available research reports from the Center cannot but lead one to conclude that these developments were uniform neither over time nor over space. Facile generalisations about a geography that appears to the naked eye as boringly flat are therefore more likely to be wrong than right. More ix seriously, such generalisations do not do justice to the capacity of Thai farmers to adapt to a wide variety of changes taking place within this landscape, and are more likely to give rise to misguided policy prescriptions. Ammar Siamwalla Bangkok November 2001 x Chapter 1 Introduction Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr This book is about recent changes in the agrarian systems and societies of the Chao Phraya Delta. It is no exaggeration to claim that these changes have been large and diverse. Although traditionally dubbed as Thailand's "rice bowl," with the implication of an agrarian society practising rice monoculture, this description has become rapidly less appropriate over the past three decades. Cropping patterns have become more varied, more complex, and cultivation more intensive. The growth of Bangkok has made markets more powerful and accessible. Entrepreneurs, factories, and new informal businesses have come into the village, while young people have left for the city. Patterns of landholding have changed as family strategies adjust to the new conditions of labour availability and market opportunity. Water has ceased to be an open access good, and become a managed resource which is increasingly scarce and hence subject to competition. Village society has become not only markedly different from the past, but also more fluid and more closely integrated with the outside world. Government policy makers scramble to keep up with this pace of change with schemes to change crop patterns, revolutionise water management, and decentralise government. These recent changes are predicated on a long historical development of agrarian society in the delta. The conventional view of the establishment of the Siamese kingdom begins with a gradual southward migration of the Tai ethnic group. In the mid 14th century the capital of the kingdom was established at Ayutthaya, around the margin of the inhospitable southern part of the delta I. Although Men-Khmer settlements and cities already existed in the delta, the foundation and development of Ayutthaya triggered improved communication Francois Molle and Thippawal Srijantr routes radiating from the capital, and boosted maritime commerce as well as the expansion of rice cultivation, mostly in the flood plain of the Chao Phraya