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Thailand has been trapped into a middle-income country for many years. And, it is believed that development of agricultural sector to be agro-industry is a way out of the middle-income trap. In the Northeast region, Ubon Ratchathani province, a huge factory for produces biofuel (ethanol) from cassava was established, which supported under the state’s alternative energy policy. It was expected to support energy sustainability, protect environment as well as creating job employment and income in rural areas. In this regard, the cooperation of biofuel company together with state agencies which accordance with the state’s agricultural extension strategy, was done. The phenomenon raises the question whether or not the cooperation model would help Thailand to escape from the middle-income trap.
This paper is based on a doctoral research in Development Sciences program. According to the multidisciplinary approach, research methodology was mixed-methods which used qualitative and quantitative techniques for collecting data in the field site. The field work is conducting in 2016, in Ubon Ratchatani province of the Northeast, so the paper explains preliminary findings of the research.
The paper illustrates the cooperation between government agencies and the private companies under the project, so-called “U model”. This project aims to encourage the farmers to expand production areas of cassava as well as to increase productivity of cassava in the future to meet the demand of cassava by the ethanol factory. Meanwhile, the project has a long term goal to create a role model of agro-industrialization in accordance with the government’s agricultural development strategy. This project includes complex and different activities such as training of farmers to know how to produce cassava effectively according to proper modern science of agricultural knowledge. In addition, the bio-ethanol manufacturer in corporation with provincial governmental agencies have implemented various activities to promote a new agricultural extension strategy. This strategy includes an agricultural zoning project which aims to identify lands which are suitable for growing cassava in the province. Additionally, the strategy refers to an establishment of “Smart Farmer” project which aims to train new generations of farmers to know good practices of farming. Furthermore, the strategy covers an establishment of farmer membership program which aims to provide additional helps and benefits for farmer members who promise to sell their cultivations to the company directly. The implementation of the U model project, to some extent, has found successfully to meet the goals. This success of this project can be seen from the fact that a number of farmer members have significantly increased cassava yields and extended production areas.
Nevertheless, there is a number of signs of barriers and difficulties met by the project. For instance, the extension of production areas and the increased yields of cassava are lower than expected level. The more critical concern is the expansion of cassava production areas into the conservation areas which has led to the decline of forest areas, and the release of water pollution from the ethanol factory into the river which creates the conflicts between local villagers and the factory.
Preliminary research findings are as follows. The U project’s implementation successes in education of farmers due to availability of technical knowledge and cooperations among the U company and governmental agencies. Nevertheless, the implementation of the U project activities beyond education of farmers tends to have difficulties. Since governmental agencies lack a common goals, they are likely to perform redundant works. Moreover, some governmental officers lacked of capacity to follow the new governmental’s strategy. The more critical problem is that all activities performed by the U company and governmental agencies are technical. They focus more on training the farmers to know technical knowledge and to use new technologies in farming. Nevertheless, the U company staffs and governmental agencies put less attention to social background and economic conditions of farmers both in the village level and the household level. These unaware issues are unfair structure of agricultural markets, and unequal power relations between farmers and other groups. The unawareness of social background and economic and political conditions of the project’s implementation is a barrier to develop a fair and sustainable agro-industry. So, it could not help Thailand to avoid being trapped from the middle-income country.
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