Experience in Supervising a Farmer Network for Sustainable Agriculture
Development in Central Thailand
Prateep Verapattananirund
Eco-community Vigor Foundation
647 Jaransanitwong 57, Bangplad, Bangkok 10700, Thailand, Email:
ecvf_prateep@hotmail.com
ABSTRACT
Under the Sustainable Agricultural Development Project (SADP) of the Department of
Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives with a financial support from Danish
Cooperation for Environment and Development (DANCED) between 2000 and 2002, a
farmer network named “Panaphol” was established and, at present, it has 13 farmer groups
involved with a total of about 4,000 members in the small holder sector scattering in 7
provinces in the central region of Thailand. Panaphol has a wide range of agricultural
activities from intensive agriculture with irrigation water to integrated farming in rainfed
condition and community forest.
The principle of the establishment of Panaphol is active learning process through siteappropriate technology development or participatory technology development (PTD) for
sustainable agriculture. A series of active learning forums were organized for innovative
representatives from farmer groups in the target areas to create common understanding in all
dimensions of sustainable agriculture by providing lectures from resource persons, green
study tours and an opportunity to exchange experiences on the impact of the past agricultural
development on their life, especially on poverty incidences and natural resource degradation.
Then, they developed the key performance indicators for sustainable agriculture.
The innovative farmers were divided by major agricultural activity into 3 sub-networks,
consisting of irrigated paddy rice, vegetables, and integrated farming and community forest
sub-networks, in order to develop site-appropriate agricultural technologies aiming at the
reduction of production costs or dependency on external inputs, especially chemical fertilizers
and pesticides. The best existing agricultural practices in each sub-network were identified
and the improved ones were proposed. Action plans were made and tested in the fields by
farmer volunteers. In other words, the farmers themselves developed and implemented their
own research plans. They collected and analyzed the data; exchanged information and
experiences with and learned from other farmer volunteers and groups; and synthesized the
site-specific knowledge and site-appropriate technology. This active learning process is
ongoing, while the main actors are farmer leaders and their organizations and network, and
the role of external organizations is to coordinate, facilitate and catalyze. The paper also
gives detailed information of PTD for irrigated paddy rice production as a result of the above
mentioned networking approach.