Abstract
Northern Thailand is the center of a number of controversies surrounding changing cropping patterns, in particular related to deforestation driven by the expansion of maize monocropping by peasant farmers. Growing demand for maize by the global livestock industry has driven the conversion of land from forest and/or shifting cultivation to chemical-intensive maize, with associated environmental (i.e., forest encroachment and annual burning of fields) and social (i.e., farmer indebtedness) problems. Over the years, some of the same farmers have been exposed to ‘alternative development’ programs and projects, initially motivated by pressure to substitute for illegal crops and more recently by concerns over deforestation and particulate matter air pollution from the burning of crop residues. This scenario is made more heterogeneous by a variety of land tenure situations and greater or lesser degrees of community control over land and forest. Faced with varied situations, peasant families can pursue different livelihood strategies, particularly in reference to the degree to which their production is market oriented. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers in Nan and Chiang Mai provinces, over a range of the aforementioned circumstances, we contrast families who pursue what we define as food security (cash cropping to earn money to buy food), food sovereignty (primarily production for self-provisioning) or mixed (a combination of both) strategies. In terms of indicators such as indebtedness, we find greater benefits from the food sovereignty and mixed strategies, though we also find that these are limited by security of land tenure issues, as well as by the degree to which community management of resources is or is not present.
Highlights
Northern Thailand is in the grips of a decades-long expansion of monocropped maize produced by peasants and small farmers to supply the global livestock feed complex, which is strongly rooted in Thailand
In this paper we report on interviews and surveys applied primarily to peasant families with varied engagement in maize monocropping and in development projects, in Nan and Chiang Mai provinces in Northern Thailand
The first phase of the study focused on the linkage between land tenure security and food security and food sovereignty among rural farmer households, and the second phase emphasized an examination of security of land tenure interventions to ensure the food security of farmer families
Summary
Northern Thailand is in the grips of a decades-long expansion of monocropped maize produced by peasants and small farmers to supply the global livestock feed complex, which is strongly rooted in Thailand. There have been diverse responses to this emerging crisis, ranging from the strategies pursued by peasant families themselves to the ‘alternative development’ projects offered by diverse institutions, in order to ostensibly address issues ranging from deforestation and burning to farmer livelihoods. This provides the rich background and context, with farmers under varied circumstances of land tenure, market engagement, etc., for our analysis presented below of farmer strategies under these circumstances. We sought to compare and contrast families who pursue strategies more based on placing self-sufficiency before the market, which we define below as food sovereignty and mixed strategies, versus an exclusive focus on production for the market, to earn income to buy food, which we call a food security strategy
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