Using Labour to Characterise Forms of Agriculture: A Thai Family Rubber Farming Case Study

ABSTRACT

To contribute to the debate on labour and the ways of farming, this study tested the relevance of a labour-based typology to discriminate among forms of production operating in the Thai rubber sector. The data used came from surveys with 469 farmers. The case of Thai rubber-based family farms is specific but also brings generic insights to the debate. Classifying the farms based on their mode of organisation helps in understanding farmers’ overall strategies regarding farming and non-farm activities. These differences were important and were linked to the capacity of family labour to develop non-farm activities. However, surprisingly, no discrimination among the types of farms appeared based on the agricultural production system. This finding appeared counter-intuitive given the importance of hired labour in rubber family farming. The non-significant differences for the practices and the land and labour productivities engaged in rubber cropping could be linked to the use of share-croppers (and not wage employees) as external labour. Further research needs to identify factors that can unlock productivity in the rubber plantations, whatever the category of holding. The importance of pluri-activity has strong implications that will require expanding empirical works focusing on labour issues.

KEY WORDS:

• family farming
• farm typology
• labour
• share-cropping
• Thailand

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted under the framework of the Hevea Research Platform in Partnership (HRPP). It was supported and funded by Yara International ASA, the Thai International Cooperation Agency and the French National Research Agency. The authors thank the farmers for their patience and kindness during the interviews, the enumerators for collecting data, the staff from the Rubber Authority of Thailand for their essential support in contacting and gaining access to the farmers, our colleagues from the changing farming systems, household strategies and resource management (ASG) team in the Markets, Organisations, Institutions and Stakeholders Strategies (MOISA) Research Unit for discussing an earlier version of the article. Special thanks to Dr Philippe Thaler (CIRAD, Eco&Sols) for his valuable comments on the earlier version of the article.

Disclosure Statement

This research was supported and partly funded by Yara International ASA, a fertiliser firm.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported and funded by Yara International ASA, the Thai International Cooperation Agency and the French National Research Agency under the grant ANR-14-CE03-012, HEVEADAPT.