Last week the New York Times ran a story on young people in rural Thailand leaving the farm to pursue urban education and employment:
[I]n Thailand today, rice farming is suddenly the preserve of the old as young people stay longer in school and as the vast metropolis of Bangkok lures the country’s best and brightest to careers in air-conditioned workplaces. “All they can do with their hands is use a cellphone,” said Sudarat Khammon, who at 33 is the youngest farmer in Baan Khlong Khoo, a village of stilt houses outside the central Thai city of Phitsanulok. Only 12 percent of Thai farmers today are younger than 25, down from 35 percent in 1985, according to government statistics, and their average age jumped to 42 in 2010 from 31 in 1985.
As the article notes, it’s hardly a surprising story given the shift from agriculture to services and industry that has occurred in Thailand, and most other developing economies, over the past half-century. In the 1960s agriculture made up about 36% of Thailand’s GDP; now it is about 10%.
What is surprising (but perhaps it shouldn’t be) is the reaction of Mahidol University’s Iam Thongdee to this transition:
As young people flee the farms, the values and knowledge of rice farming and the countryside are fading, including the tradition of long kek, helping neighbors plant, harvest, or build a house, says Iam Thongdee, who grew up in a farming family and became a professor of humanities at Mahidol University in Bangkok. “This has alarmed me for a long time,” said Mr. Iam, clutching an ancient manuscript handed down through generations in his family and used to instruct farmers in the rituals of village life. “We are losing what we call Thai-ness, the values of being kind, helping each other, having mercy and gratefulness.”
This sort of rural nostalgia – of which Ajarn Iam is far from being a lone promoter – does nothing to address the central socio-economic challenge facing rural Thailand.
In fact, Thailand’s problem is that the movement of labour out of agriculture has been relatively slow. In the 1960s, the agriculture accounted for 83% of the workforce (producing 36% of GDP). There has been a substantial shift in the composition of the labour force, but Thailand still has almost 40% of the workforce in agriculture, producing only 10% of GDP. There has been some labour productivity improvement in agriculture, but it has been lacklustre by regional standards. Labour in industry is 8.5 times more productive (in terms of its contribution to GDP) than labour in agriculture.
No wonder young people brought up on farms want to move, just like Ajarn Iam!
A core challenge for Thailand is to improve the quality of its education, especially in rural areas, so young (and not-so-young) people can move into more productive, and lucrative areas of employment. At the same time the productivity of agriculture, and rural enterprise more generally, needs to be increased to provide sustainable and rewarding livelihoods for those who chose to remain on the farm. Nostalgic appeals to communal “Thai-ness” won’t have much appeal in modern rural Thailand.
The article was reprinted in the Bangkok Post ‘Spectrum’ section, June 10-16, 2012 – interesting that they need to reprint a NYT article to get an angle on their own rural world.
Besides Andrew Walker’s comments on economic transformation in the countryside (or lack of it) what I found most interesting was the sociological transformation. That is, the collapse of parental authority in rural families. Several farmers lament that they can’t get their kids to help out on the farm, that they know little about farm work and are glued to various communication devices. Not so long ago a good clip over the ear would have had them out in the paddy fields working, but clearly parents no longer feel able to do this. In this sense the rural world has already become modern and urban.
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It’s too low-hanging a fruit to bother with really, but just for the record:
“Iam Thongdee … grew up in a farming family and became a professor of humanities at Mahidol University in Bangkok.”
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Several farmers lament that they can’t get their kids to help out on the farm,………………….
I know one family, where the parents had no sons, only 2 girls, the oldest felt guilty, so stayed on the farm to help her father on the farm, the younger girl wanted to go to college and have a career that was not agriculture. The father b, basically harassed her about not staying on the farm until she ran away to Chiang Mai and is putting herself through college. The older sister who stayed on the farm, who is now 31, has many health problems, including spinal problems from over-stressing her slight frame, and others related to the overuse of agro-chemicals, and will probably die before 40.
The kids that see this stuff happening seriously want to get off of the farm where you can only lose money
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The following quote from the story stroke me hard:
In some parts of the world, the image of farmers is bound together with thoughts of self-reliance, strength and nostalgia for the countryside, but the Thai farmer is seen as “poor, stupid and unhealthy,” said Mr. Iam, who specializes in studying the culture of rice growing. “Farmers say that if I’m reincarnated 10 times, I don’t want another life as a farmer.”
Social and political stereotypes against Thai farmer have had not only deterred youth from taking up the plow but also produced a new spirit of resilience and pride. The adoption of ancient phrase ‘phrai’ by the red shirts speaks to the mentality of taking pride in farmer identity.
The declining value generation power of Thai agriculture also has an effect to stem political activism amongst Thai farmers
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I think most urban dwellers agree while sitting back in an air-conditioned lounge sipping our lattes that the rural should do the right thing and stay on the farms, lazy spoiled buggers, where is their sense of patriotism?
Those kids however see the lifestyles of the rich through the Thai soap operas, see the ads for whitening cream so that attractive people should look like their never step outdoors, see the middle men and bureaucrats making all the money through rice schemes, monopolies and other rip offs, can’t imagine why they would want to leave the farm? Does dad even own the farm or did the merchants grab the land as security for fertilizer and DDT and is now indentured?
Australia also movements away from rural areas, however there were productivity increases to offset it. Perhaps they can get the Burmese in to work them?
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I live in Nan, one of Thailand’s remotest provinces, where agriculture continues to represent the lion’s share of economic productivity. Unlike the central plains this is hill country with corn and sticky rice the mainstays produced in relatively small quantities on smallholdings. Whilst having no claims to any great knowledge of agricultural productivity etc it strikes me that the region is stuck in a time warp. As a result, farming is back-breaking work with mechanization limited to the odd tractor and threshing machine. It is little surprise therefore that with the advances in modern communications and media youngsters can see a world beyond their valley and yearn to enjoy all the ‘goodies’ that appear to be on offer a mere bus ride away in Bangkok or Chiang Mai.
Without doubt, conditions have improved over the past 10 years or so, the village has a very capable clinic, staffed by, admitedly young and inexperienced doctors, but nonetheless committed to caring for the local community and the schools have reasonably good basic facilities. However, this is akin to using sticky plaster to treat a fracture. Self-sufficiency is no longer sustainable utilising the current methods of production. Successive governments have ignored this fact for far too long.
Different, more profitable, commodities such as mushrooms, tea and coffee, grapes and other high value fruits would seemingly prosper in the local climate but these require training and investment, both of which are in extremely short supply.
The new generation of young people will only stay on the land if they can be made to feel that they have an economic value, that modern technology is on their side and they can enjoy the fruits of their labour. When that happens, the bus trip to Bangkok will be a return journey not a one way ticket.
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A neo-romantic idealization of rural life contrasting it with “alienated” urban society is common among urban middle classes all over the world. Often the reason is the fear that one day the countryside will take over the cities and they will loose their high status and respect. (Just think of the warning when the red hordes were entering Bangkok).
During the 80s the view of the village as cooperative unit was wide spread among NGO (“The answer is in the villages”), as well as the view that the villages represent “real” or authentic Thainess.
What actually is the problem in people from the countryside moving into Bangkok? They have as well a “right to the city” and rights as “citizen”! Furthermore, anybody who did research in villages soon notices that all these tales of cooperation, mutual help etc. are invented traditions (not the least by romantic anthropologists) rather then real history.
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I travel regularly in the rural areas of Northern Thailand, and am pretty well known in thevillages I visit and have family up there.
There is hardly anyone excepting those who have done jail time under te age of 40 in the villages.
To a person none of the farmers want their kids to have anything to do with farming now. This is a change from the generation of my wife who as a child remembers all the parents at that stage wanted their kids to be farmers. Now it is just seen as hard thankless work for no money. Parents want better for their kids.
Its funny when people talk of Thainess and cultural difference and yet all I see are the cultural similarities we see all over the world of people wanting a better life for their off spring, a little easier life themself, a few luxuries.
Its also funny to see Thainess equated as being kindness, helping each other and mercy whihc again are things we see across multiple cultures although I do note the slipping in of gratefulness. What exactly is meant by that and gratefult to whom? Thai farmers have very little to be grateful for if you look at the lives they live and how they are treated and it seems they now understand this fully themsleves.
I would suggest a lot of those who make these statements head up north or north east or even parts of the centre and south and spend some time humbly dwelling with rural people in rural settings and sharing food, drink and conversation with them or better still just listening. It isnt very difficult at all to understand the rural poor in Thailand as they arent very different from anyone else anywwhere in the world.
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If you are a contrarian you could argue that this is the ideal time to get into farming. The time to get into something is when everyone else is getting out of it especially something essential like food. This is the view put forward by Jim Rogers, the legendary hedge fund manager. He argues that the big bucks in the next few years are going to be in agriculture.
Trying to selling agricultural products as a cash crop could be tough as you are at the mercy of the global commodity markets. The fluctuations could wipe you out. For example sugar has fallen 20% over the last 2 months, not because of fundamentals, just because of the rise in the dollar which is benefited from the fall in the Euro. If you were a farmer trying to sell your sugar now you would have been hammered.
A better solution, in my view, is try to become self sufficient in food. This way if food inflation takes off you can at least feed yourself. This is what I am doing, concentrating at the moment on vegetables such as wing beans and bamboo leaf, which are easy to grow. The food is not only more healthy but tastes better! Its a learning process which involves experimentation and asking around for advise.
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Grant Evans: “The article was reprinted in the Bangkok Post ‘Spectrum’ section, June 10-16, 2012 – interesting that they need to reprint a NYT article to get an angle on their own rural world.”
For the 5+ years I have been working at that newspaper there has been a continuous stream of articles addressing every aspect of farming in Thailand but admittedly there are: 1. limitations in the information covered and, 2. the style in which articles are written, and also, 3. in the curation of past articles in a way that makes them accessible to readers desiring to get a historical perspective on issues.
This is not the first time a NY Times article has looked at an issue from a different perspective from local mainstream journalism and why this innovation doesn’t trickle down and get added to the repertoire of local journalistic practice is a good question (perhaps you have to go beyond the English language press, check out Thai PBS) , but the question could also be posed about Southeast Asian studies and why the works of academics is this field don’t get more widely disseminated and incorporated into the work of local journalists, teachers and intellectuals, and within the scope of my experience (Chiang Rai, Bangkok) they don’t.
I am continually amazed that so many people are not even aware of Thai Studies and Southeast Asian studies scholars/intellectuals working in the west, but that could be remedied with more dissemination of the work of academics outside of the expensive limited circulation academic journals and books that exist in very few places accessible to students. (This includes some work that is totally obscure until for example you find a dusty 3 volume PhD dissertation on Thai ghosts from the 1970s in the Siam Society stacks, I gave these to the Bangkok University undergraduates I was teaching at the time to use in their research papers, the first use this unparalleled but extremely hard to find work may have ever seen in Thailand.)
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) (see coursera) are another emerging way in which western scholars can engage with people located far away from their universities who could benefit from their work.
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Yabz#9 I don’t think only contrarian fund managers would advise getting into food production for the “big bucks” but as Andrew Walker has oft explained, efficiency is the key. There is no doubt that food supply will be a major issue this century. And surely many big players must be looking at Thailand’s fertile rice production capability but are locked out by Thai laws. As is so often the case with protectionism, Thai agriculture wallows in gross inefficiency. But of course to open agriculture up to “global competition” would create huge problems in Thai society and will not be done any time soon (And neither is it done in the West where after 200+ years of industrialization we still romanticize and protect agriculture). But at some point Thai agriculture has to undergo a transformation in efficiency and this will push out the small land-holders and goes to the core of all that is currently considered “Thai-ness”. Nevertheless it will come and vastly improved education is the anti-dote.
btw much as I appreciate your desire to be self-sufficent and by so doing eat better quality food, there is a good reason the world hasn’t run agriculture this way for the last 5,000 years, its hopelessly inefficient for each of us to grow our own food.
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Sounds like Professor Iam would have enjoyed a year living among the Amish.
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It is nice to be fly on the wall with people with long experience debating.
For Burma ths is going to be the very question facing soon. Unfortunately there is no considered plan or even debate and open opinion either by the givernmentbwhich s expected, but by any opposition group which is also unfortunately expected as there are precious few intellectuals or technocrats there.
It is important as the Burmese rural population is around 70%. But more importantly we still have that equivalent of “Thai- ness”.
The problem with conventional wisdom of improved productivity is it loos only in monetary terms. There are important or even vital unmeasurables- social cohesiveness, low income discrepancy, low crime, low drug dependency, keeping traditional ways and custodian of culture, etc.
One has to acknowledge that the existing system has npbeen feeding the country for millennium. Unfortunately any current substitute with shining lights are going to follow Detroit in Detroit duration of time.
But the tide cannot be stopped. Yet at least in Burma it is most important to help the farmers in safe, effective, productive farming practices with financial and technical assistance so that part of the traditional culture is maintained in modern world just like in Japan.
Sadly, that is simply a dream.
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Leaving the farm is an inevitable consequence of economic development.
A country where the majority of the people are working in agriculture is a poor country. There is no way around this unless it exports enormous amount of food.
In all developed economies, less than 5% of the labor force are working in agriculture. Most of these still produce more food than they consume.
For those who believe in the “good old days”, remember that life expectancy in Thailand (and most of the world) was about 30 years until the beginning of the 20th century.
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Chris L,
The problem with this “economic development” is that you hardly ever see people enjoying that at all.
If the money and economy is the answer ato all as the politicians, economistd as well as academics espouse, why are people compiling 100 most likely riotous cities in the United States? Why did the old pensioner shot himself in Sytagma Square?
For Thailand, the evidence is simple. At a time when people are dying at the of 30, there was no market for drug. Now there is not enough drug even with all out Burmese production well shephered by their rulers.
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Ohn,
Economic development is not the answer to everything and there are many reasons for discontent, even in the richest of countries. Rising inequality and high unemployment rates are some.
But if you believe that access to quality healthcare and education for everybody is a good thing, this cannot be achieved in an economy where the majority of people are still working on the farm.
You are mentioning Japan as a country where traditional culture has been maintained. Mind that only 3,9% of Japan’s labor force is working in agriculture.
http://www.indexmundi.com/japan/labor_force_by_occupation.html
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‘But if you believe that access to quality healthcare and education for everybody is a good thing, this cannot be achieved in an economy where the majority of people are still working on the farm.’
what a sad situation! so should we stop spending billions (millions!) on trying do improving health and education in rural areas. I suspect with modern technology we could have better education, and maybe health too with a bit of creativity. But at the same time I don’t think Thailand has good education or health services for the poor in urban areas. They may be relatively free (with some strings) but quality is generally poor/
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Allan GB,
It’s not a sad situation. What is needed is for more people to leave the farm to get educated as, for instance, teachers and doctors.
With higher productivity and more efficient farming practices, the same amount of food will be produced by less farmers.
This is called development. Some people don’t like it because things will not be the same as before when things were supposedly much better.
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Chris L but you must agree the transition period can be sad for many. Such as many of the 2-3 million Issarn people in Bangkok on low wages, intermittent, informal work, or unemployed. Single women working in massage, with no wages, only tips or a cut of the cost of massage. Even graduates working in factories – there are many! And as I say I do not believe they have very good health services or education available to them. Access is not easy, for free health care they have to go to one hospital where they are registered. Some will do informal education if they have the time, resources and motivation – and sometimes you cannot blame them for the lack of motivation.
I may be getting a little off subject, but the econcomic model has always favoured the cities, it is still a pretty much top-down approach. You are right about Japan, and now South Korea and the direction is the same everywhere. But isn’t the argument more about giving people choice and alternatives? Your argument on invetability is based on this economic model, also followed by one-party systems now, but is it inevitable that we can only have this model? Isn’t it falling apart in Europe?
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Chris,
The problem again is the unmeasurables.
You do accumulate and improve on the measurable and feel rich about it, yet you cannot possibly say the society as a whole is much better off like 40 millions uninsured Americans, or the bar girls.
Again why are there so much social upheaval every where as meausured by relative indexes of drug abouse and crime?
All very well have technology to help mankind but there msut be wise and conscious effort for social equality which is the forte of traditional millinwu old societies. Modern “advanced” societies are poor work in progress versions.
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Allan GB,
50 years ago 90% of Thais lived in poverty. Today it is about 10%. 20% of children died before their 6th birthday. Today it is no more than 1%. I could go on, but I guess you get my point. This transition period may be sad for some, but it surely was no better before.
Until the mid-70s, the fertility rate in Thailand was about 7 children per woman (the population of Thailand was 8 million 100 years ago). With so many young people entering the job market every year, the negotiation power to set wages will be in favor of employers. Hence the low wages.
On top of this Thailand also has migrant workers from Burma, Laos and Cambodia, who are putting further downward pressure on wages.
With a stabilizing population and neighboring countries with growing economies, Thais should be better off sooner rather than later!
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Ohn,
You are mixing up America and Thailand. In Thailand people have gotten out of poverty in the past 30 years. In America people have gotten in to poverty. This is mainly because the American people have been voting for a party that is favoring the rich. I have no idea why.
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Chris L our debate appears to be one of realism or more pragmatic approaches as opposed to more idealistic approaches. I am unashamedly in the latter category (‘you may say I am a dreamer but I am not the only one’, JL), but I need a shot of pragmatism from time to time, so your points are worth considering. I don’t think we can find middle ground easily, esp. not on an email list! But anyway, for decades there has been a drift to rural, non-high consuming areas by idealists and people who just cannot hack it anymore in the big cities of western countries. There is I believe a drift away from the economic model, the neo-liberals, and the corporate greed of recent years by ‘thinking’ people. In Thailand these drifts can be detected too – ‘hippies’, organic growing movements, overcrowded national parks, idyllic resorts (pandering to the rich but at least breathing easy). There are people who do not want to leave the land in Thailand for family and other reasons, but leaving the land covers a mixture of aspirations, and economics cannot be separated from many of these desires to move. I think we should be talking about aspirations and inequalities and not just how things have improved over time and how much better it will be when we are all in cities.
When my 8 year old ‘adopted’ Issarn daughter was staying with us during school holidays she woke up one morning and in all innocence asked “why do you live where it’s like hell when you could be in heaven in the village?” BTW WHO have just announced that their research says diesel is in the same category of cancer causing properties as asbestos.
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Allan,
I agree with you absolutely. With advances in technology and drops in prices, it has become very difficult to make a living of a farm unless it’s run on a large scale. A farmer in the West spends about 5-6 hours per hectare per year. Farming 200 hectares of land is not a job, it’s a hobby. And for most agricultural products prices are too low to sell it profitably.
Jared Diamond is giving a very insightful description of local communities in Montana in his book Collapse. Basically he is describing the situation in very similar terms to you. Local people have great difficulties to make a living, and their children are moving to other states. “Rich people” are moving in from the coasts driving up land prices, making it even more difficult to live of farming. They are staying less than the 6 months a year exempting them from income tax. I can highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-Edition/dp/0143117009
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