Rural people's organizations and agricultural extension in the upper north of thailand: Who benefits?

Recent developments in agricultural extension policy in Thailand emphasise the importance of working with and through local organisations of rural people (RPOs). The paper describes these developments and explores four sets of arguments commonly used to support them: that they will increase the efficiency of extension by reducing the unit cost of “contact” between farmers and extension staff; that they provide a more effective means of enabling farmers, both individually and collectively, to take action in the interests of local agricultural development; that they promote equity in the provision of extension services; and that they can lead to the empowering of rural people to take greater initiative in their own development. Northern Thailand has a long history of the active involvement of local organisations in agricultural development, most notably the independent “muang fai” irrigation associations. The present century has seen a number of government sponsored efforts to promote the formation of new types of RPOs, efforts which have met with mixed success. Research conducted by the Universities of Reading and Chiang Mai in the nine provinces of the upper north identified the varied processes by which RPOs come into being and investigated the relationships between RPOs and extension agencies in the government and voluntary sectors. A series of case studies in different parts of the region provides evidence in support of the above four sets of arguments. These studies also show, however, that current approaches can lead to new patterns of exclusion among the rural population and may lead to a debilitating dependence of newly created RPOs on government or voluntary agencies. The limitations of current approaches are identified and suggestions made for increasing the benefits of RPO‐based agricultural extension.