Intensive Land-use with Pond Irrigation and its Limitations in Northeast Thailand
Masuo ANDO
Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, 1-1, Owashi, Tsukuba,
Saitama,Japan, Email: amasuo@jircas.affrc.go.jp
ABSTRACT
The poor soil and highly erratic rainfall have been cited, as the principal reasons why the
farmers have not been able to realize the high agricultural productivity in Northeast Thailand.
And then their incomes and living conditions are still below those of any other region in
Thailand. Planting the glutinous rice in paddy field for self-consumption and cash crops such as
sugarcane and cassava in upland is one of the most dominant farming systems in this region.
The sugarcane and cassava are still important crops for the farm household economy, although
the prices of these cash crops have been fluctuating and declining in the international trade
competition, and the successive planting of these crops has made the soil depleted.
The integrated (or mixed) farming has been paid more attentions as one of the alternatives, and
the government or NGO groups have begun to promote it recently. In our research site, Nong
Seang village in Khon Kaen Province, Agricultural Land Reform Office dig the farm ponds free
of charge for the farmers and are supporting them to introduce intensive crops such as
vegetables and fruits, substituting for sugarcane or cassava. But actually it is not so easy for the
farmers to change the traditional farming into integrated (mixed) farming, because of the lack of
money for investment, the lack of knowledge or technologies of vegetables and fruits and
marketing problems etc.
In this paper, the difficulties and limitations for introducing the intensive crops by using farm
ponds would be clarified though the survey on the actual condition in our research site, and it
would be also investigated what kind of conditions or what kind of supports from the
government is required to change the existing farming systems.