การปรับตัวในการประกอบอาชีพของสมาชิกครัวเรือนเกษตรในชุมชนบ้านท่าพรุ อำเภอตากใบ จังหวัดนราธิวาส

Abstract

This research aimed to study the diversity of occupations, career change and access to natural resources related to the livelihood of agricultural households and occupational adaptation among members of agricultural households in Ban Tha Pru, Tambon Jehae, Amphoe Tak Bai, Changwat Narathiwat. The population for the study included members of 52 agricultural households in Ban Tha Pru community and 7 community leaders. The research instrument consisted of a semi-structured interview schedule and the data were analyzed by such statistics as frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation and paired sample t-test. The qualitative analysis was conducted using the content analysis approach by identifying the relevant issues, validating data by the triangulation technique and establishing the relationship between the issues. The results of the study revealed the following: 1. Regarding the occupational diversity, career change and access to natural resources related to the livelihood of agricultural households in the study area, it was found that most of the people in Ban Tha Phat community have been engaged in the rice farming since the past. Later, the villagers have shifted their occupation to rubber plantation, fruit tree orchard, growing vegetable, raising cattle and oil palm plantation. Off-farm occupations included government service, general hired workers, employees in companies, trading and construction contractors, thus bringing more income to the families. The most changing period for Ban Tha Pru community occurred during the last 10 years (2007-2017). There has been a shortage of farm workers. This is due to the fact that most of the farmers in the community are the elderly (70%) and the rest (30%) are young people with certain level of education; 10% of them work in town and city areas, whereas 20% work in other provinces. Some farmers have shifted their land to rubber plantation and oil palm plantation instead of rice farming and fruit tree orchard. In addition, certain villagers have opted for leasing their land for planting grass as animal feed. The access to natural resources in the community began to decline due to the fact that the natural resources at present have been reduced to the rate of 30%. Forests, water resources, public pastures in the community have been destroyed by the actions of the people in the community and from outside the community. This has affected the livelihood of agricultural households. 2. As for the adjustment of occupation of agricultural household members, the study found that the community has had less career change because the farmers still maintain the career as a traditional occupation of the community. However, the adjustment to increase the income of households by supplementary agricultural occupations required following factors: available appropriate land area, capital, experience, reasonable prices for the yields, and abundance of public grazing area. Most importantly, there must be agricultural workers so that farmers area able to adopt other agricultural occupations such as rubber plantation, fruit tree orchard, vegetable garden, oil palm plantation and raising extra animals. Some households may choose to pursue off-farm occupations such as construction, trading, etc. It is evident that when the change and development take place in the community, farmers often resolved problems together. But if the resolution cannot be found, the farmers will embark on the concept of sufficiency economy to survive in the present society.