Forest, farmers, property and deceit

Many farmers in Thailand, perhaps a quarter of all farmers, have problems with their land tenure and land use rights. Here I want to explain what those problems are and how they arose. A solution is far away. It seems as if the authorities do not really want a solution to be able to go their own way so arbitrarily.

Farmer Khàjàn is now 67 years old. He is the fourth son of a family of seven children who are rice cultivators in the Central Plain. Unable to support himself there, forty-five years ago, like millions of others in that period, he moved into the nearby hills, cleared 30 rai of forest and started to cultivate. He was an illegal land squatter. In 1985 he, along with many others, received a document of use that made his farm work legal. But it gave no property rights and the land could only belong to his heirs.

He is now no longer able to perform heavy labor and his 2 daughters in Bangkok do not see a farmer's existence. One day a man comes along who wants to buy his land for 1 million baht. Khàjàn protests: after all, he cannot sell his land, he only has the right to use it. But the man says he has already reached an agreement with the Land Registry (Land Office, thîe din in Thai). Khàjàn accepts the purchase price. The man later turns out to be a representative of a paper company: not many years later, Khàjàn's land, and much of the surrounding land, is one large eucalyptus plantation.

Recent press release, February 2018

Phayao police has fourteen participants in the anti-government protest march We Walk presented to court yesterday. They were arrested on Monday on charges of violating the ban on gatherings. Eleven are members of a farmers' group and the others are members of the People Go Network, which initiated the march.

The farmers say they joined because they were accused of trespassing by influential landowners, despite their claim that it was their own.

Background to this press release

It is about land rights problems in the village of Doi Thewada (literally 'the Hill of the Gods'), close to my old hometown of Chiang Kham, Phayao province. There was a demonstration there a few days ago that wanted to support the movement 'We Walk (in Friendship)'. They carried placards that read, "The poor people's land is nothing but a prison and a crematorium." Fourteen protesters were arrested, charged with banning demonstrations of more than five people, and then released on (small) bail.

The movement 'We Walk' walks from Bangkok to Khon Kaen to draw attention to (land) rights, environmental issues and freedoms. Despite the fact that a court has approved the trip, they are hindered by police and military.

The villagers of Doi Thewada say they have lived there for a hundred years. They have 'usage' documents dating back to 1946, and they can also show that they paid taxes on the land to date. In the village there are 41 households living on 500 rai of land.

From 1989 to 1993 there was a period of great drought, which prompted many residents to sell their land to otherwise unknown land traders. There is no documentation whatsoever about this and it is also not allowed. However, with this documentation, land can be transferred to relatives and villagers, but not to outsiders.

In 2002, representatives of a company called Chiang Kham Farm come to tell the residents to leave because the land is theirs. They threaten lawsuits.

The said company is a private limited company registered in Bangkok owned by several members of the same family with a capital of 78.000.000 baht. She owns land and leases it to farmers.

The inhabitants refuse to leave except for a few. In 2006, the aforementioned company suddenly came up with real land titles issued by the land register. Some attempts at mediation fail and the villagers enlist the help of farmers' and human rights organizations. Lawsuits started which in 2015 appealed against the Chiang Kham Farm company: they are the owners of the land. The residents have to leave, but they don't, which in turn results in lawsuits against the residents. The farm puts up a sign at the entrance to the village urging residents to leave. Last year, the court started a mediation attempt between the residents and the company. That is still running. This is the precarious situation of many farmers in Thailand.

Land tenure, law and history

Some people still think Thailand is an agricultural nation. The images of a happy farmer's family planting and harvesting rice, not caring about anything else, not only dominates the image of many foreigners, but is also part of the mystical 'Thainess' feeling imposed by the Thai ruling class.

Only 10 percent of the Gross National Product in Thailand comes from agriculture, the rest is industry, services and tourism, to name the most important, although 30 percent of Thais say 'farmer' as their profession. The average age of a farmer has risen in recent years from 53 to 56 years. Very few children of farmers are attracted to this profession. Agriculture has long since ceased to be the cosy, village-like and self-sufficient farmer's activity as propagated under the 'sufficiency economy'. The Thai agricultural economy is inextricably linked to the global economy. In addition, only a small proportion of the farmers can live off their land, the majority also provide for their basic necessities in other ways.

A few news items made me decide to take a closer look at the subject of 'farm and forest'. In recent years, thousands of farmers have been displaced from land where they have resided for decades, especially in the south and Isan. A few years ago, Prayut gave user documents to a few thousand grateful families in the north who until then illegally worked the land, per family 6 rai (= 1 hectare).

The background

It goes without saying that Thailand changed drastically in many areas between 1940 and 2000. This also applies to a large extent to land use: the area of ​​forest decreased dramatically and was replaced by agricultural land.

Thailand forest cover percentage 1938-1988

year	1938	1954	1961	1973	1976	1982	1985	1988
percentage	72	60	53	43	39	31	29	28

We see the forest area gradually shrinking by about 1 percent per year. In 1989 there was a disaster in southern Thailand where a freshly cleared mountainside came down during a rain shower and wiped out a village, killing 300 people. Since then there has been a general, public and private, logging ban in Thailand. In principle A permit must now be applied for for every tree to be felled. After that, the loss of forest fell sharply and figures indicate that Thailand is now covered with forest for about 24 percent, but that also includes rubber plantations, etc.

In 1960, Thailand was still mainly a rice-growing country: 75 percent of the agricultural land was devoted to this crop. Since then, the area of ​​rice has doubled, but other crops have now quadrupled in size and take up half the farmland, and perhaps more in economic value. The emphasis on rice farmers is outdated.

Causes

What are the causes of this massive deforestation and population migration that reminds me of the American migration to the West (the 'American Frontier')? Population pressure was an important factor. Between 1950 and 2000, the population increased from 20 million to 65 million with the largest increase occurring between 1960 and 1990. It is estimated that 30 percent of the population moved from the rice-growing lowlands to the higher forest areas. Furthermore, before 1980, when industrialization continued, there were few other jobs. Between 1960 and 1980, the prices of agricultural products such as cassava, sugar, rubber and palm oil were relatively high. The government also wanted to promote the agro-industry. Between 1960 and 1975, the military under the guise of 'national security' (the fight against communist hotspots) cut down a lot of forest. Partly under the influence of the American presence, many new roads were also built, especially in the Isaan where large bases were located. In this way the 'frontier' was opened up.

Forest and land ownership

Initially, all those farmers who settled in the higher forest areas were illegal forest squatters. In the official documents, those areas were 'degraded forest' named to keep up appearances and to be able to deal with the illegal settlers if necessary. In the fifties and sixties, no one else really cared about that. Gradually, however, more conflicts arose over land ownership. After the departure of the 'Three Tyrants', Thanom, Praphat and Narong after the October 1973 uprising, a democratic period began in which the problems of the peasants were listened to more. This resulted in the 'Land Reform Act' of 1975 in which fairly revolutionary plans were unfolded. Land would be expropriated and distributed among the peasants, no one could own more than 50 rai. All farmers would receive documents (more on that later), and leases were limited. I wrote an interesting story about that on the Thailand blog 'Interrupted Revolution, the peasant revolt in Chiang Mai in 1974-1976': www.thailandblog.nl/historie/boerenopstand-chiang-mai/

The problem was that the implementation of the law was seriously flawed because it was left in the hands of local rulers, often large landowners themselves.

Thailand has a confusing amount of documents regarding ownership or usage rights. However, you can distinguish three groups: 1 a chanoot (land title) with green garuda gives full property rights (my son has one of these) 2 a chanoot with red garuda gives right of use but with a view of ownership after, usually 10, years (my son has three of them) 3 a document that only gives the right of use, such as that of farmer Khàjàn and can never be converted into full ownership (unless….just fill in).

Since the Land Reform Act of 1975, attempts have been made at various times to provide farmers with solid documentation of lands they have sometimes plowed all their lives. An important issue of documents was the so-called Sor Por Kor 4-01 program, in the late eighties-early nineties. That ended when the Chuan Leekpai government fell over the accusation that many documents intended for poor farmers went to wealthy entrepreneurs. The then Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Suthep Theugsuban, was intensively involved. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiwa also attempted large-scale land reform in 2009, but this fell through because of the many protests against it. Land would again fall into the hands of rich people, they said.

There are still quite a lot of landless farmers and farmers with very little land. (On average the land holding is 35 rai but the variation is very large. You cannot survive with less than say 60 rai). There are also many farmers without documentation. (Especially among the non-ethnic Thais such as the hill tribes who are constantly chased away). And there are still many farmers who only have a right of use. (I couldn't find good numbers on farmers with insufficient documentation, but 20-30 percent is a good estimate). That this can easily lead to conflicts, especially between the farmers and the state (which often wants to provide benefits to companies) is understandable.

Solution?

Don't ask me for a good solution to these chaotic situations. Certainly, there must be more forest, the land must be better distributed, there must be reparcelling, the number of farmers must decrease, each farmer must be sure that the land he cultivates provides legal certainty, the quality of the products must increase, there must be more alignment with the world market and most farmers will have to be supported financially, as in all civilized countries. All this can only happen with the cooperation and consent of the farmers themselves, under a democratic regime. The only certainty is that the junta's haphazard policy, however well-intentioned, will lead to bigger problems and will not contribute to a substantive and lasting solution.

Main source: Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker, Thailand, Economics and Policy, Oxford University Press, 1995