Jonathan Rigg - More Than the Soil: Rural Change in Se Asia

Jonathan Rigg

First published 2001 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-38211-4 (pbk)

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It is February and I am writing this overlooking the harvested ricefields of the Ping Valley in Northern Thailand. To one side is the wall of a housing estate where some of Chiang Mai City's wealthy (and mobile) middle class increasingly choose to live, and where I have set up shop with my family for four months. Between the wall of the housing estate, with its manicured lawns, swimming pool, tennis courts and sculpted trees, is an area of unused land. Formerly riceland, it has been colonised by shrubs and grasses. I mean to walk along there and find out why it is idle. My guess is that it is because a wealthy Thai family have bought it for speculative reasons. Another possibility, though, is that the wall of the housing estate has disrupted the local drainage system and made wet rice cultivation a hazardous affair. The least likely scenario is that the availability of non-farm jobs in this area of Thailand, and the generally low status accorded agricultural work, has meant that diere is no one to work the land.

Around 20 kilometres to the south is Tambon Thung Sadok, where I am carrying out fieldwork. The holding company that brews Mekong whiskey, as well as Carlsberg beer in Thailand has a subsidiary based in Tambon Thung Sadok that contracts farmers to grow a variety of Japanese rice for their brewery operations. Around a kilometre to the east is a canning factory which buys its fruit from orchards in the area, mosdy planted on converted riceland. It also employs around 200 local people. Moving 20 kilometres further east still from Tambon Thung Sadok are the industrial estates of Lamphun that source many of their workers from rural communities in this area of Thailand.