Agricultural extension scheme for inheritance of agricultural career of farmers’ heirs in the Upper Northern Region of Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to: (1) study the situation of inheritance of agricultural career of farmers’ heirs in the upper northern region (2) investigate the factors affecting the passing of agricultural career onto the farmers’ heirs and (3) propose an agricultural extension scheme to encourage the farmer’s heirs to inherit the agricultural career. This research deployed a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design. The quantitative research was conducted by interviewing 519 sampled farmers’ heirs in the upper northern region. The collected data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis. The qualitative research was conducted by interviewing specific targeted 15 farmers’ heirs and 15 farmer families’ heads. The data were analyzed by the method of content analysis. The study found that 70.30% of farmers’ heirs willingly inherit the farming career. Among these heirs, it was found that 47.40% of them decided to pursue only farming career, 40.30% of them pursuing farming career as their sidelines, and 12.30 of them pursue the farming career as additional main career. For the rest of heirs, 22.20 of them have not yet decided to inherit the farming career but 7.50% of them definitely decided not to inherit the farming career. The study also found that there were 11 relevant impacting factors, 10 positive factors and one negative factor, with a statistical significance level of 0.05. The positive factors are gender, age, marital status, family income, number of times to receive the advice from the agricultural extension officers, attitude towards farming career, family’s farming land size, size of farm land locating in the rural area, variety of family’s farming productions, and amount of family’s farming equipment. One negative factor is the number of family members. The study purposed two levels to encourage the farming career inheritance of farmers’ heirs. The first level concerns the encouragement for family level. This consists of the following procedures: (1) teaching how to do agriculture, (2) practical training in agricultural areas, (3) encouraging farmers’ heirs to realize the value of farming career, (4) persuading the heirs to participate in planning all management steps of farming, (5) giving the family’s hereditament to the heirs, (6) encouraging the heirs to have a preliminary career to earn some income to fund the farming career. The second level directly focuses on the heirs. The procedures are: (1) building warmth in the family as a sequel of taking care the parents, (2) making the family to be ready for farming or having a family’s hereditament as the asset, (3) building the perception of farming career as an independent career, being one’s own boss, and having a simple life, (4) encouraging the heirs to return to rural community where having a low cost of living, and (5) increasing the proficiency of farming career success.