Progressing Towards a Sufficiency Economy in Small Rice Farming Households in Northern Thailand

Abstract

This study’s purposes are to evaluate and search for ways to progress towards a Sufficiency Economy (SE) in small farming households. The data were taken from farmer self-evaluations by assigning scores to their practices and activities to reflect whether and how far they follow the concept of a sufficiency economy, in both the production and the personal life domains. A total of 447 samples of small rice-based farming households in Chiang Mai Province covered in this study are categorized into those pursuing three different production systems. The investigation reveals that the households in the alternative farming system have a higher degree of a SE than those in the conventional and the subsistence farming systems which are almost at the same SE level. From the ordered logit regression, nine factors were identified as being able to contribute to the higher level of farming households in practicing according to the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) including; 1) more than 12 years of educational attainment, 2) farming in the irrigated area which enables the farmers to have adequate water for agricultural production and involve a diversity of farming activities and systems, which in turn leads to the next factor, 3) taking up a wide range of economic activities, 4) household savings, 5) positive attitude toward a rice farming career, 6) willingness and sharing which includes being satisfied with the external environments comprising the next three factors, 7) good social surroundings, 8) access to financial sources, and 9) availability of good public infrastructure. The presence of all of these nine factors will make the farmers ready to learn and practice the principles of SEP more intensively.