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Health Check: Issues and
Problems in the Management of Land Resources
Land is a very significant capital input
in the agricultural sector. However, over the past years,
there has been an increasing trend of concentration of land
holding among a few people and problems of landlessness for
small-scale farmers. Based on the 2001 statistic of the Office
of Land Development, approximately 10 per cent of the population
has a land ownership of up to 100 Rai (16 hectares) and above,
while as much as 90 per cent of the population own 1 Rai (0.16
hectares) each. It has also been estimated that 2 million
families or approximately 800,000 people are landless and
have to work for or lease land from big landlords for a living.
The underlying causes of the above problems
are land ownership prohibition under the Thai national laws
that preferentially grant the ownership rights to the government
and private sector, overlooking the rights of community and
practices of common property ownership. Furthermore, there
are widespread problems of military land and national parks
being declared on top of community's farming land, also tourism
promotion policy has meant that public land has been used
for agricultural development and for serving private interest.
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