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Farmers' Aspiration and Perception of and Attitude Toward Small Farmers Development Project (SFDP) in Four Villages of Khon Kaen Province, Northeastern Thailand
Thesis Abstract:
The study aimed to: 1) find out the small farmers' aspirations for themselves, their family/household members, community, and country; 2) identify small farmers' perceptions of and attitudes toward the objectives/goals, philosophy and principles, policy guidelines, expectations, strategies, and accomplishments/consequences/impacts of Small Farmers Development Project (SFDP); 3) identify the strong and weak points of SFDP; and 4) determine the relationship between small farmers' selected sociodemographic characteristics and their aspirations, perceptions, and attitudes toward certain specific aspects of the SFDP.
One hundred and thirty-two farmer participants randomly chosen from villages of Khon Kaen province were interviewed to gather primary data; other documents were the source of secondary data.. Simple arithmetic and statistics were used to analyze the data.
Farmer respondents were predominantly male with an average age of 42 years, mostly married, and had only elementary educational attainment. They had 3-4 children and an average of 5-6 household members, including one or more relatives (extended family). They had been farming for 24-53 years. They had been in contact with their project personnel "very often" except for a few who never had contact with project personnel because they were not full-time farmers.
The farmers believe that SFDP contributed greatly to the attainment of their aspirations in general and in particular. They appreciated and understood the project objectives, although a few said there were too many. They gave a "very adequate" rating to the attainment of the objectives.
They perceived the philosophy and principle of SFDP to be "very helpful" in its implementation and they felt that the policy guidelines were "very appropriate." Their expectations were very similar to that of SFDP and they rated SFDP as "very satisfactory." The SFDP personnel performance and qualities/traits were rated as satisfactory, while the achievement/activities of SFDP were perceived to be very satisfying.
Overall, the farmers' perceptions of and attitude toward SFDP were very favorable, satisfying, and encouraging. This implied that development of special programs earmarked specifically for or with bias to small farmers will ensure that they received preferential treatment through a receiving/utilizing system for all farmers in homogenous groupings. Therefore, as a matter of government policy, it was recommended that the planning methodology of joint multi-level and multi-agency microplanning from below be adopted and adapted.