Author: Nitchakan Inkong
AIT Library Call Number: AIT Thesis no.RD-19-02
Year: 2019
Academic Program: Regional and Rural Development Planning (RRDP)
Type: Thesis (M. Sc.) – Asian Institute of Technology, 2019
Examination Committee: Thi Phuoc Lai Nguyen (Chairperson); Mokbul Morshed Ahmad, Takuji W. Tsusaka (Examination Committee Members)
Abstract: Even though the government strives to promote sustainable agriculture and social capital in Thailand by establishing many local institutions, the Thai farmers still lack crucial knowledge on sustainable agriculture and are unable to become a successful group due to lack of norm, interaction and network. The research attempts to find out the farmers’ perception of social capital, namely interaction within group, interaction with other groups, intrarelationship, interrelationship, common norms and rules and networking that is built within their organizations within different socioeconomic contexts, namely Bann Sang district ofPrachinburi province and Nong Saeng district of Saraburi province. Additionally, it also studies two different farming systems which involves crop production and fishery. The research tries to access the farmers’ knowledge and practice of sustainable agriculture and observes how the social dimensions affect the knowledge and practice of sustainable agriculture by using semi-structured interview and questionnaire survey. It uses convenience sampling to approach all the organization which were listed by district authority and approaches all the members who were available to do the survey. This study observed the farmers’ perception of social capital’s dimensions built within local institution in both study areas. It found that farmers in Saraburi province had higher perceived level of interaction with other groups and networking than the farmers in Prachinburi province due to geographical set up. In contrast, the farmers in Prachinburi province had higher perceived level of common norms and rules than Saraburi province because of poor management of the organization. Nevertheless, fish farmers had lower perceived level of every social capital’s dimensions than crop farmers due to their work characteristics. In terms of the farmers’ knowledge and practice, farmers in both provinces had same knowledge on sustainable agriculture concept, but Saraburi farmers tend to have more
Scholarship Donor(s): Her Majestry the Queen’s Scholarships (Thailand)
Note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Regional and Rural Development Planning, School of Environment, Resources and Development
Advisory: Full-text is available at https://library.ait.ac.th/ (accessible to local ip address only)
