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2. From the Rice Fields to the Cities
- University of Wisconsin Press
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53 Today’s Thai farmers are not the same as the farmers of yesteryear, because we have firmly come together. Sign held during farmer protest in Chiang Mai Ongoing power struggles among the members of the ruling triumvirate—Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram, Police General Phao Sriyanond, and Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat—created the space for some forms of dissent in the decade following the end of World War II. Pushing through the cracks and fissures of repressive rule, the Chiang Mai farmers who called for the decree of the 1950 LRCA in 1951 attempted to expand this space. When Field Marshal Sarit staged a coup, declared martial law, and named himself sole premier in October 1958, this possibility of open dissidence disappeared. During Field Marshal Sarit’s premiership and then that of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn, who seized power after Sarit’s death in 1963,there were severe restrictions on protest, speech, and life generally. Under these restrictions, repressive state action and damaging inaction were more likely to pass without direct criticism from those affected than they might have during another time. The tenancy problem, which was steadily growing in the north, was one key area of state inaction. Other than an unanswered query from the Ministry of Interior in Bangkok about whether it would be appropriate to decree the 1950 LRCA in 1956, the national and provincial governments were silent on land tenancy issues in Chiang Mai for nearly twenty years. This inaction was one more level of state disavowal of the Chiang Mai farmers’ calls for the decree of the 1950 LRCA. In the meantime, farmers’ living and working conditions plunged deeper and deeper into crisis. Land rents continued to be exorbitant across the north, sometimes climbing even as high as two-thirds From the Rice Fields to the Cities 54 . From the Rice Fields to the Cities of the rice harvest. Compounding these problems was a general shortage of land, particularly lowlands suitable for wet-rice cultivation.While rice yields in the Ping River valley in Chiang Mai and Lamphun were on average over fifty thang per rai, higher than most in the country, there simply was not enough land to go around. Even those farmers who possessed land increasingly possessed less. In 1963, the average amount of land held by farmers nationally was 21.7 rai; the average amount held in the north was 16.1 rai. By 1973, the average amount of land held by farmers in the north had dropped to 8.8 rai; 27 percent of farmers possessed less than 5.0 rai. Another estimate indicated that approximately one-third of northern farmers owned all of their land, one-third were part owners, and onethird were tenant farmers. This did not account for those farmers who were completely landless, meaning farmers who neither possessed nor were able to rent land. A number of factors precipitated the growing land shortage in the north, including the shrinking of the once-expanding land frontier, population growth, disinheritance (as already small parcels of land were subdivided among siblings), and indebtedness. The difficulties and suffering experienced by farmers in Chiang Mai were mirrored in different ways across the country. One progressive newsweekly identified the most significant problems faced by farmers in late 1973 as access to land and loss of land to “capitalist landowners” (nai thun jao khong thi din), followed by low market prices for crops and high land rent prices. Farmers in the northeast, who had the lowest average per capita income of all Thai farmers, faced a significant shortage of cultivable land and a lack of sufficient irrigation to cope with the arid environment. Southern farmers experienced low market prices for their rubber and the increasing growth of commercial plantations. Although farmers in the central region had the highest average per family income, they also had the highest rate of indebtedness. Many farmers and other impoverished people were forced to use moneylenders who operated outside the official banking system. While these lenders were willing to lend to individuals with no credit history, they often did so at exorbitant rates. As a result, a farmer might borrow a principle sum of 2,000 baht from a nonbank moneylender and watch it skyrocket to 20,000 baht in a few months. Many farmers who owned land and gave their land title as a guarantee lost their land in this manner.Unfortunately,because farmers agreed to these terms,they...