13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THAI STUDIES GLOBALIZED THAILAND? CONNECTIVITY, CONFLICT AND CONUNDRUMS OF THAI STUDIES 15-18 JULY 2017, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND From Highland Tomatoes to Lowland Markets: Highland Agriculture Restructuring and Power in Thailand Tomatoes Commodity Network Jirawat Rugchat Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University -------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction Over the past thirty years, Hot and Omkoi district, Chiang Mai province, Thailand, highland areas, have been become an effective role in tomato fruits production. Accordingly, five years ago, historical statistics from Chiang Mai provincial agricultural extension office has obviously showed that these highland areas have been producing total tomato fruits more than 80% of Chiang Mai tomato fruits and also have been become tomato cultivating areas approximately 90% of Chiang Mai tomato planting areas (see table 1). Although, since 1980s, the extreme extension of tomato planting in highland areas, Hot and Omkoi district, has led to change in various levels. In local areas, after the expansion of tomato cultivating areas, highland villagers had been changed their livelihoods. Some of them denied traditional upland rice, they, then, turned into produce commercial tomato fruits and utilized land and labor intensively for making more profits. Many villagers transformed themselves as highland entrepreneur farmers who both produced and collected tomato fruits for trading to lowland markets. In global market level, highland tomato fruits have been become the favorite fruits and transferred to trade in different markets, for example, Thailand central region markets, Thailand provincial markets and international markets. Additionally, the network of tomato commercial from highland to lowland markets has established new various actors who have been playing an important role in tomato commodity network. Table 1 Comparing Historical statistics of tomato production between Hot and Omkoi district and Chiang Mai province from 2011 to 2015 Location 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Cultivated Hot and Omkoi district 7,226 5,553 2,126 1,907 1,619 areas (rai) Chiang Mai province 7,930 5,801 2,436 2,341 1,680 Tomato fruit Hot and Omkoi district 8,092 16,314 5,018 3,685 3,040 production Chiang Mai province 9,732 16,988 5,613 4,234 3,169 (ton) *1 acre = 2.5 rai, 1,000 kilograms = 1 ton Note: This tomato historical statistics were collected from Chiang Mai provincial agricultural extension office. 1 13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THAI STUDIES GLOBALIZED THAILAND? CONNECTIVITY, CONFLICT AND CONUNDRUMS OF THAI STUDIES 15-18 JULY 2017, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND This article is a sociological and anthropological study that aims to explain the highland agriculture restructuring particularly in Hot and Omkoi districts, Chiang Mai province, Thailand. After tomato cultivated areas have been widely extended and to differentiate the role and power of various actors in tomato commodity network from highland to lowland markets. In the field work study I select Na Fon village, Hot district, Chiang Mai province, as a study village and collect data by interview with villagers between January 2016 and March 2017. At that time I stay in Na Fon village around 5 – 10 days per month. To understand the tomato commodity network, I employ multi-sited research to interview with different actors who are engaged in the tomato network from highland to lowland markets, such as, tomato growers, highland entrepreneur farmers, highland transporters and lowland wholesalers. Nonetheless, to simplified highland restructuring and highland tomato commodity network, I divide the structures of this article as three parts. Firstly, I try to conceptualize the network frameworks for adaptation to Thailand tomato commercial. Secondly, I explain Na Fon village background about mode of production before 1970s and, then, clarify the restructuring of production and labor after expansion of tomato cultivation in highland after 1970s. Thirdly, I differentiate the power relations of various actors in tomato commodity network from highland to lowland market. 2. Commodity Network Approach and Agricultural Commodity Movement Since late 20th Century, agricultural commodity movement from production to consumption has been widely attended and diligently researched by many branch scholars. Some scholars decided their research through historical study. For example, working of Mintz (1985), an American anthropologist, Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history, explored that during colonial era sugar cane commodity had been become an important agriculture goods and systematically moved across the nations from the third world countries to European countries such as England, Spain, Portugal and Nederland. Moreover, for this research, he obviously clarified about production, distribution and consumption processing of sugar cane commodity and also explained power relationship between sugar cane producing countries and sugar consuming countries. After that, agricultural commodity movement has been evidently conceptualized as commodity chain conceptual framework. Commodity chain has well known as political economy perspective which focused on commodity connection in various processes from production to consumption and explored power relations of different actors in that chain. This approach, actually, was developed by world-system theories which were utilized to analyze world economic structures (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1986), and based on dependency theory (Gibbon, 2001). Currently, commodity chain approach is the study about labor network and commodity processes from production to distribution (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1986; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994). In addition, the commodity analyzing through commodity chain approach has often found inequality in the world commodity system (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994; Talbot, 2002). Talbot’s research, in 2002, Tropical commodity chains, forward integration strategies and international inequality: coffee, cocoa and tea, has found that tropical agriculture commodities in the research have 2 13TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THAI STUDIES GLOBALIZED THAILAND? CONNECTIVITY, CONFLICT AND CONUNDRUMS OF THAI STUDIES 15-18 JULY 2017, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND been engaged to countries development and connected to international inequality. Talbot also summarized that, after tropical commodities have been produced in developing countries and transferred to developed countries, producers have been disadvantaged and inevitably regulated by transnational companies and consumers who dwelled in developed countries. Commodity chain analysis could be divided as two basic types, producer-driven commodity chains and buyer-driven commodity chains. Producer-driven commodity chains were found in sectors where production is capital- and technology-intensive, such as automobiles, aircraft, heavy machinery and computers. They tend to be multilayered and to involve thousands of firms (including parents, subsidiaries and sub-contractors). On the other hand, buyer-driven commodity chains were generally found in sectors where production is much more labor-intensive, but where design and marketing play a central role. (Gibbon, 2001: 347) Although, Gibbon (2001) has argued that differentiated commodity chain analysis as two characteristics has no longer been explained all commodity chain structures which appear in globalization. He has proposed international trader-driven chains and emphasized on the role of international trading companies in commodity chains (Gibbon, 2001). Nevertheless, even if agricultural commodity study according to commodity chain approach would constitute to new understanding about agricultural commodity movements, but then this approach has been often criticized as it focused on uni-directional linearity chain (Hughes, 2000: 177) and gave priority to vertical dimensions of the chain and denied horizontal dimensions (Barrett, Browne and ILbery, 2004: 22). Therefore, after that, for avoidance with two problems above, commodity network approach is presented as a new approach which considered to relationships between production and consumption is provided by concept of the “network”. The idea of network can be contributes to link various actors who related to the commodity. In addition this idea also suggests that different actors in the network are consistently depended on each other as “webs of interdependence”. Hughes and Reimer mention about the idea of network that: “The idea of network helps to conceptualize the complex and multi-stranded ways in which different types of nodes (people, firms, states, organization etc.) are connected. While Thrift and Olds (1996) explain the use of the network as a representation of the organization of social and cultural ties in economic linkages, they suggest that at the most general level of analysis it simply captures the pattern of ‘web of interdependence’ existing between different sets of actors in the economy” (Hughes and Reimer, 2004: 4). Furthermore, commodity network also focuses on how different kinds of nodes (people, firms, states, places and organizations) are connected to one another in complex and multi-stranded ways (Hughes, 2000: 178) and views relations between producers, institutions, retailers and consumer groups as the outcome of complex flows between a range of interconnected actors that have become enrolled in the network. Crucially, the network integrates both vertical and horizontal dimensions of commodity