About The Book
Thailand's Rice Bowl: Perspectives on Agricultural and Social Change in the Chao Phraya Delta brings together 14 scholars who discuss the following topics:
Knowledge in the making: a brief retrospective of village-level studies in the Chao Phraya Delta during the 20th century. Ethnic groups in the central plain of Thailand: the setting of a mosaic. Between concentration and fragmentation: the resilience of the land system in the Chao Phraya Delta. Dynamics of rice farming in the Chao Phraya Delta: a case study of three villages in Suphan Buri province. Agrarian transformations in the Chao Phraya Delta: a case study in tambon Thung Luk Nok. Fruits and vegetables in Thailand's rice bowl: the agricultural development of poldered raised bed systems in the Damnoen Saduak area. Socio-economic and environmental implications of inland shrimp farming in the Chao Phraya Delta. Government policy and farmers' decision-making: the agri-cultural diversification programme for the Chao Phraya River Basin (1993-95) revisited. Allocating and accessing water resources: practice and ideology in the Chao Phraya River Basin. Lan Laem from 1980 to 1996: profile of a rice growing village in Nakhon Pathom province. The cultural factor in rural-urban fringe transformation: land, livelihood, and inheritance in western Nonthaburi. Social structure and local organisations in the Chao Phraya Delta. Chachoengsao: democratising local government?. Agrarian versus mercantile deltas: the Chao Phraya Delta in the context of the great deltas of monsoon Asia. An extensive bibliography and maps add to the value of the study.
Introduction
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 delta¹. Although Mon-Khmer settlements and cities already existed in the delta, the foundation and development of Ayutthaya triggered improved communication 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 Delta (see Map 3 in Appendix). In the late 17th century, Tachard (1685) described his journey from Ayutthaya to Louvo (Lop Buri) through "vast plains reaching out of sight covered with rice," while Turpin in 1771 noted "paddy fields [that] could be seen as far as sight could reach." However, agriculture as a whole, and rice cultivation in particular, long remained more limited than often assumed. The central plain around 1830-40 was a mixture of virgin land (swamps, heavy grass, clumps of bamboo, thick shrubbery, jungle tree, etc), and of diversified agricultural production including sugarcane (in the south of Bangkok, in Nakhon Chaisi, Chachoengsao, Chai Nat and near Kanchanaburi), vegetables and orchards (west of Bangkok, near Samut Songkram and Chachoengsao), and rice. In 1835, even the surroundings of Ang Thong were still "largely uncultivated" (Terwiel, 1989). Towards the middle of the 19th century, on the eve of the Bowring Treaty, the population of the Chao Phraya Delta was concentrated in Bangkok, in minor cities such as Ayutthaya, Nakhon Chaisi, or Chai Nat, and more generally along the main rivers. The population numbered around 1.3 million and included a fascinating ethnic mosaic. Baffie (Chapter 3) provides a historical examination on the role of migrations and wars in the constitution of an ethnically varied population that consisted of people of Indian, Malay, Mon, Lao Song, Lao Phuan, Vietnamese, Khmer, and Chinese origin. At this time rice cultivation in the delta was limited to approximately 300,000 ha. The development of the "rice economy" has been extensively recounted and this makes further description unnecessary. The reclamation of the delta, both through the initiative of the state and by a "silent frontier" of peasants, reached a first inner limit by the end of the 1930s. Most of the land had been cleared, with the exception of higher lands in the old delta (see Map 3 in Appendix) and in the Mae Klong area. Through their account on the land system and its transformation in the 20th century, Molle and Thippawal (Chapter 4) capture the successive stages of agrarian development that resulted in pressure on land resources, and change in land tenure and average farm size. The crisis around 1970 was the result of several concomitant factors including closure of the upland frontier, stagnating yields and depressed rice prices, indebtedness, and pressure on land resources. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the crisis was relieved by several factors including dissemination of High Yield Varieties, double cropping, improvement of water control, development of institutional credit, a drop in the birth rate, betterment of rice prices, and growing supply of non-farm job opportunities.
Hindu (932)
Agriculture (123)
Ancient (1099)
Archaeology (791)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (922)
Biography (725)
Buddhist (548)
Cookery (166)
Emperor & Queen (575)
Islam (245)
Jainism (321)
Literary (888)
Mahatma Gandhi (386)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist