SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis describes and analyses two peasant rice farming systems established in the northern intermontane basins and the Chao Phraya delta of Thailand in a comparative perspective. The two distinctive farming systems, i.e. the Intermontane Basin and the Delta farming systems, are examined in ecological and socio-economic contexts with special emphasis upon the role of indigenous technology at both regional and village levels. Intensive fieldwork into the specified villages in Chiangmai and Ayutthaya provinces was conducted for 26 months mainly in 1974-75 with further visits in subsequent years. The farming systems are first examined in the ecological context by investigating physiographical and hydrological conditions, methods and practices of irrigation and the consistent process of farming operations in rice cultivation. The labour-intensive and small-scale transplanting culture of the Intermontane Basin has been founded on the traditional irrigation systems mainly developed at village level. In many parts of the Delta, however, where units of cultivation are larger, broadcast-sowing culture has been adopted which depends basically on natural precipitation and annual inundation. These contrasting farming systems, in which agricultural technology interacts with both ecological and socio-economic conditions, are in turn dominated by different forms of peasant agricultural production: subsistence production in the Intermontane Basin and petty commodity production in the Delta. The differentiation of the forms of peasant production is primarily derived from the complex of socio-economic conditions of the two farming systems stemming from the processes of land reclamation, land tenure and labour utilisation. Thus we recognise within the farming systems two structures, ecological and socio-economic, which are closely interrelated through the farming technology prevailing amongst the peasants. Structural analysis of the contrasting farming systems reveals the complex reality of Thai peasant rice cultivation. It is reasonable to assume that any problems and changes in peasant agriculture can be detected most, effectively by means of this structural approach.