Subject:
social-ecological resilience; smallholder farmers; organic rice production; ThailandTags (Theses)
Author/s: Chaiteera Panpakdee
PR-T
2018
D - AgSy 1
SEARCA Library
TD
Chiang Mai University
September 2018
Thailand
Smallholder farmers have been playing a vital role as the world's economic stability and food security is propelled by them. However, the normality of smallholder farmers is a group of people, who are limited in assets, which cause them sensitive vulnerability to changes. As a result, they tend to counter a variety of disturbances in case of the changes are not coped appropriately. A possible strategy recommended by academicians that is valuable to cope with changes efficiently the greatest is "resilience ability" as its outcomes not only offer adaptive strategies but also empower such smallholder farmers to live sustainability in the focus of dynamic changes of their social-ecological system. This study had three objectives: (1) to investigate perspectives of social ecological resilience of smallholder farmers in organic rice production; (2) to develop indicators of social-ecological resilience of smallholder farmers in organic rice production; and (3) to assess the degree of social ecological resilience of smallholder farmers in organic rice production. To achieve those, 53 smallholder farmers in Chiang Mai's four districts, namely Mae Rim, Mae Taeng, Sansai, and Phrao, were selected by snowball sampling as informants. Besides, the study had been conducted by both qualitative and quantitative methods through the Participatory Rural Approach (PRA). The results are summarized as follows. Regarding the first objective that focused on investigating the organic rice production coupled with 4 vital resilience properties: (1) learning to live with change and uncertainty; (2) nurturing diversity in its various forms; (3) combining different types of knowledge and learning; and (4) creating opportunity for self-organization and cross-scale linkages. The smallholder farmers were semi-structured interviewed, in which the notion of 13 critical characteristics necessary for resilience building and scenario analysis based on plausible futures were employed to generate questions. Also, technography had been conducted to observe their activities during the interviews. Such derived data were eventually transformed into meaningful data by grounded theory and three procedures of the qualitative data analysis. The result indicates there are 47 components needed to maintain organic rice production's structure and functions at an original domain amidst dynamic changes. Learning to live with change and uncertainty includes 11 components (educational level, age and rice farming experience, occupational skills, gender equality, investment in the asset basic, investment in the farm equipment, utilization of ecological services, additional exploitation of existing water sources, inquisitive mind for lifelong learning, organically oriented mindset, and land tenure). Nurturing diversity in its various forms has been made of 10 components (diversity of plant species, diversity of rice varieties, diversity of income sources, diversity of marketing channels, ownership of guaranteed price and organic certification, given honorific address, diversity of usable water sources, diversity of credit sources, diversity of information sources, and diversity of collaborative networks). Combining different types of knowledge and learning consist 15 components, (knowledge designed by a bottom-up approach, heritage of indigenous knowledge, existence of dialect and local traditions, a variety of learning approaches, obtaining knowledge through the second form of agricultural employment, effective use of ICT, adaptation, value-added products, organizing financial flows with the household account, reasonable farm scale, securing consumer confidence, being full-time organic farmer, marital status and independence of children, number of farming generations, and number of neighboring organic farmers). Meanwhile creating opportunity for self organization and cross-scale linkages comprises 11 components (dependence on household resources, self-rice seed production, dependence on rice and dietary materials self-produced, dependence on household labor, rice field location, co-operative farming, knowledgeable exchange through networks, dependence on local inputs, dependence on local food systems, mutual labor exchange, and favorable support from the government institutions). Then, the 47 components were together integrated with the insights gained from the interviews and observations. Such components were also given the important intensity by 8 adept smallholder farmers through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). These were done to make the components capable of assessing the smallholder farmers' resilience in the quantitative fashion called social-ecological resilience indicators of organic rice production (SERis). According to the resilience scores, categorized into four intervals by the E-S-N-U grading system, show there are nine smallholder farmers (16.98%) qualified the excellence resilience (E) as their mean of resilience score is computed of 0.66 from the full rating of 1.00. Sixteen smallholder farmers (30.19%) are standardized satisfactorily (S) as the mean is 0.57. Needs improvement of resilience (N) belong to 20 smallholder farmers (37.74%), who are scored of 0.50, meanwhile, 8 smallholder farmers make the mean of resilience score of 0.43, which could be referred unsatisfactorily (U). In general, smallholder farmers in the intervals, except the E, are the greatest prominent in learning to live with change and uncertainty as the sum is higher than the rest of 3 resilience properties', and in series of 65.00, 60.80, and 57.00 from the full rating of 100. On the contrary, the E interval is outstanding in combining different types of knowledge and learning, which is adjacently followed by learning to live with change and uncertainty. The sums are sequential of 74.80 and 73.76. However, nurturing diversity in its various forms is together with the four intervals' flaw. This property is needed to be enhanced, making their own version of organic rice production system more robust. The sums are 50.24, 41.84, 34.24 and 29.88, respectively, which are the lowest compared to the other properties. Finally, the smallholder farmers ' resilience scores were analyzed in Kendall rank correlation with the full rating of resilience scores. According to the results computed by the statistical program for social sciences (SPSS) point out the first two intervals are likely to be resilient as the coefficient value (T) at the significant level (p) of .001 is 645 and 637, respectively. These values could be interpreted as they have the strong positive correlation to resilience. The N interval is judged the moderate positive correlation as the T was computed of .536. Meanwhile, the U interval is unsatisfactory resilience as the T is only .456.
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