Land colonization by peasants outside their village territory: the example of km 79

The process of colonization outside the settlers' original territory usually starts from long-settled and densely populated areas where the whole territory of the villages is divided up and under cultivation up to the border. This is especially true of the rice cultivation zones in the central plain and north-east Thailand. Reserve land is available only in far-away forest areas that have not yet been allotted to a certain community and are thus owned by the state, that is, the king. Because of the often considerable distance from his home village, the pioneer settler will establish a new home, which he will use either temporarily or permanently. In the case of temporary use, he keeps his old house in his former village and only commutes seasonally between the new field (with upland crops) and the old field (with wet rice). If he gives up his old home, he also gives up social connections. It often takes many years in the new pioneer settlement areas before a new, functioning village community develops.

The impetus for this kind of pioneer settlement, which has increased considerably during the last 30 years, is in many cases the building of new roads and thus the opening up of isolated forest regions.

An example of this process has been investigated by us in the district of Pak Tong Chai on the southern border of the province of Nakhon Ratchasima. The sample area includes 10 villages, grouped around the recently developed centre of San Chao Po (known popularly as "Km 79"). Just 20,000 inhabitants are registered. In addition there are a few thousand unregistered inhabitants, most of whom belong to the group of temporary settlers who have kept their old homes in their areas of origin.

The area lies on the newly constructed National Highway No. 304, about 300 km northeast of Bangkok, and roughly 80 km south of the provincial capital of Nakhon Ratchasima (also known as Khorat). It rests about 400-500 m above sealevel and belongs to the mountain ridges which surround the Khorat plateau. At this point the geological formation is determined by an eroded anticline, where the underlying crystalline rocks (mainly granite) are exposed between two escarpments of the Khorat sandstone plateau. The rather mountainous relief can be regarded as the main obstacle to agriculture. As a result of its exposed location south-west of the main plateau, the area receives a relatively high rainfall of about 2,000 mm per year. An indicator of the high rainfall is that the primary forests, of which only a few areas remain, belong to the evergreen humid monsoon-forest type. The seasonal character of the rainfall seems to be less pronounced here than in the great plains of Thailand. December and January are the only months which are really dry. In November and February there is rainfall of about 100 mm. In all other months there is distinctly more rainfall, so that there is definitely the possibility of farming almost throughout the year. Most of the soils are deeply weathered and have a yellowy grey to red colour. Where granite reaches the surface predominantly latosols have been formed, which are generally more fertile than the weathered soil on top of the predominant sandstone formations.

The colonization and settlement of the Km 79 area took place in two phases. During the first phase, before the road was constructed, that is, before 1964, there were only a few individual farmers, who practiced extensive shifting slash-and-burn cultivation in isolated clearings. Their chief objective was to produce food for their own needs and they mainly cultivated upland rice. Besides this they planted some chill) and collected products from the forest to sell at the markets in Pak Tong Chai and Prachantakham, two to three days away on foot.

The securing of food for self-sufficiency as the main motive for the first phase of pioneer settlement was supplanted by market-oriented production during the second phase which followed. The decisive moment for this development was the extension of National Highway 304, which connected the American military bases on the Khorat plateau to the back-up port of Sattahip on the Gulf of Thailand. The building of this new road took over three years and was completed in 1969. This date coincided with the boom of maize in Thailand as an export to Japan. During these three years and the following two years until 1971, large areas of the region changed from forest into a mono-cultivation landscape for maize. Just five years later the central market place, Km 79, had sprung up near a former road-building camp.

The following is a summary of the main characteristics of this settlement process. (For more details see R. Riethmüller, U. Scholz, N. Sirisambhand, and A. Spaeth, in Uhlig 1984.)

Most of the settlers came either from the area around Sara Buri in central Thailand or from the hinterland of Nakhon Ratchasima (Khorat) in north-east Thailand. Maize growing was not unknown to the settlers from Sara Buri, but those from Khorat were almost all formerly wet-rice farmers. The reason for migration for most of the settlers was that the farms in their areas of origin were too small. A few of those interviewed also mentioned the fact that there was more rain in the new area as a reason for their move.

A decisive role in the change-over to maize cultivation around Km 79 was played by traders, who supplied the pioneer settlers at the start with seeds, food, and credit, and thus made them dependent from the very beginning of their new lives as colonists. According to our investigations, around 80 per cent of the farmers are in debt today. Credit is necessary mainly for contract ploughing with a tractor, for food, and in order to employ wage labourers for the maize harvest. The farmers have no legal ownership deeds, as their occupation of the land was illegal, and so they are not entitled to credit from a bank. Thus they are dependent on the traders' credit, which has an average monthly rate of interest of 5 per cent. As a result of the pressure of paying back debts and the obligation to deliver the yield to the trader right after the harvest, the farmers have practically no choice but to cultivate on the whole of their farms the crops that the trader wants-in this case, maize. This also explains the lack of rice cultivation. Furthermore, besides the purchase of maize, the sale of rice to the settlers is an important part of the traders' business. Thus, it is not in their interests that the farmers should grow their own rice.

On average, the size of the pioneer farm plots varies between four and seven hectares. As opposed to the dual production system of the pioneer farmers in our first sample area described above, the maize monoculture farms in the Km 79 area lack any subsistence-oriented production and are thus extremely sensitive towards every fluctuation in the price of maize on the world market. This situation does not, however, apply to those settlers who did not move here permanently but kept their old wet-rice land in their area of origin and now commute seasonally, twice a year, between their old wet-rice fields and the new upland plot of maize. Somewhat surprisingly there is only a little renting of land or share cropping. Similarly there is little ownership at large estates. Farms of more than 20 ha are exceptional. The explanation for this can probably be found in the unstable legal situation regarding ownership of land. In principle all land reclamation in the Km 79 area was illegal because it took place in an area which had been declared "reserved forest" by the Government in Bangkok. According to the existing legal code all new settlers could be driven from their land immediately. (For the legal situation see S. Ratanakhon in Kunstadter, Chapman, and Sabhasri 1978.) For this reason the traders are still hesitant to hoard land. They prefer to wait for the land reform which has already been announced by the Government and which proposes the allocation of title deeds to the farmers. For the time being control over the producers and the products is enough for the traders' leaving control of the land to the farmers.

The unstable legal situation has a very disadvantageous effect on the methods of land cultivation. The fear of one day being driven from their land makes the farmers exploit the natural resources as rigorously as they can. Measures to conserve or improve the soil, for example terracing of slopes, crop rotations, the use of fallows, the cultivation of perennial bush and tree crops, and the use of fertilizers, are only taken in exceptional cases. Thus one can hardly speak of real farming with foundations built to last. Only a few settlers, in particular those who were among the first in this region, have planted orchards.

It is remarkable that the continuous planting of maize without the use of fertilizer has not yet resulted in declining yields. Our enquiries showed that occasional decreases in the yield could be traced mainly to bad weather conditions, in particular to dry periods and only to a lesser extent to a decrease in soil fertility. One of the reasons for this phenomenon might be that deep ploughing with tractors means better suppression of weeds (especially of the ill-famed imperata grass called "communist grass" by the local people) and enables better utilization of deep-lying soil nutrients than would be the case in the traditional application of the digging stick or hoe.

The input of capital is quite high, although it is almost exclusively used for laboursaving production means, in particular to rent a tractor for ploughing. The tractors are provided by contractors at fixed rates of hire. These contractors sometimes live a great distance away, in some cases in Chon Buri (south-east Thailand), 250 km away. Those farmers with very small holdings who cannot afford to rent a tractor and therefore work their land with the hoe usually have serious problems in combatting the weeds. Large areas of waste land, covered with Imperata cylindrica and other weeds, show that here the struggle against the weeds has been abandoned and that the former farmer has left.

The lack of permanent dwellings as a result of the unstable legal situation, previously mentioned, also shows in the appearance of the villages. The simple architectural style of the houses with their cheap building materials indicates their provisional character. Many of them resemble a primitive hut rather than a real home. Unlike the traditional clustered villages of the Thai, the irregular, scattered settlement pattern with individual farms or small hamlets is predominant here. There are hardly any gardens attached to the houses.

As a result of this settlement structure no real village communities have yet sprung up. This is made even more difficult by the different origins of the settlers. Similarly there is a lack of any type of co-operation. In spite of social fragmentation, no distinct formation of classes amongst the peasants has come about. Probably the main reason for this is that land is still relatively fairly divided up amongst the settlers.