Collective action and technology development: up-scaling of innovation in rice farming communities in Northern Thailand

Keywords:small-scale rice farmers, collective action, community rice seed, local innovations, green manure crop, contract farming, participatory technology development, up-scaling, technological configuration, grid-group theory,Northern ThailandMany small-scale rice farmers practise collective action to overcome production constraints, and to generate and redistribute benefits for maintaining improved household livelihoods. The practice is particularly important for small-scale rice farmers inNorthern Thailandwhere rice-based livelihood diversification prevails.The thesis seeks to build an understanding of farmer capacity in cooperation, as well as to identify crucial enabling factors that stimulate collective action to enhance continued learning and adaptation for sustainable development, via analysis of group attributes in relation to four sets of elements: agro-ecological conditions, socio-economic variables, cultural context and the role of government intervention. The study focuses on small-scale rice farming inNorthern Thailand, with the aim to understand the social and technical relations involved in rice based farming systems, and to illuminate scope for participatory technology development more generally.This thesis targets rice farmers because of their important contribution to the country's food security and social economic development.The research was carried out during 2003-2005 ina village with viable forms of collective action (Dong Palan, DPL) and in another village (Buak Mue, BM), included for comparative purposes, where off-farm employment affects labour use and household composition in such a way that collective action eroded or has a different orientation.Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used for data collection. Semi-structured interviews of key informants, group meetings, focus group discussion, farmer workshops and participant observation were all employed.The collective action was explored under four case studies including (i) community rice seed production scheme, (ii) local innovations in rice farming (frog protection as integrated pest management practice, modification of weed slashing machine as hand-held rice harvesting equipment, and double rice transplanting technique), (iii) participatory technology development in green manure crop, and(iv) contractfarming.There are various forms of collective actions, and the forms suitable for technology development depend on social and material circumstances in the local context. The varying organizational forms of collective action reveal a hybridity of institutional modalities, which is further described, using grid-group theory, by the level of regulation of individual behaviour and the level of absorption of individuals in group memberships. The most important institutional and individual mechanisms are flexible forms of benefit sharing, recognizing and managing common interests, trust building, and finally, joint problem solving and knowledge exchange among farmers themselves and between farmers and external agencies.This thesis evidently shows that effective technology development and agro-technological innovation depend on social relationships and, more specifically, on the capacity to link to existing forms of collective action.Technology that works isa configurationresulting froma combination of agro-ecological conditions, technological artifacts and social arrangements, including collective action.The incentive for people to participate in technology development as well as the management and development of resources is a major enabling factor for sustainable collective action. In addition, collective knowledge can make an important contribution to technology development and innovation so that people with long experiential learning from trial and error in rice farming are able to integrate their own knowledge with outside knowledge in developing technology.This thesis indicates that horizontal up-scaling worked in the context of DPL which exhibits good social networking among farmers, but not in BM village.The observed variety in organizational forms and social coherence leads to an important lesson for the practice of participatory technology development, namely that attractive technologies may be incommensurable with realities in rural economies. Hence, an insight from this thesis is that constructing a fit-for-all model of collective action for small-scale and sustainable technologies may not be desirable because of the different social and material conditionalities in the field.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Limnirankul, B.
Other Authors:	Richards, Paul
Format:	Doctoral thesis biblioteca
Language:	English
Subjects:	adaptation, cooperatives, environmental impact, environmental protection, farmers, innovations, rice, rural communities, technology, thailand, adaptatie, boeren, coöperaties, innovaties, milieubescherming, milieueffect, plattelandsgemeenschappen, rijst, technologie,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/collective-action-and-technology-development-up-scaling-of-innova
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!