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Socioeconomic Factors Influencing the Abandonment of an Alienated Rice Land in the District of Kuala Pllah, State of Negeri Sembllan, Peninsular Malaysia
Thesis Abstract:
The study aimed to determine the socioeconomic variables that influenced the abandonment of an alienated rice land by farmers in the district of Kuala Pilah, state of Negeri SembiIan, Peninsular Malaysia. A stratified random sample of 100 was taken, and equally divided between respondents currently cropping their land (the planters) and those currently not doing so (the nonplanters). Primary data were collected from respondents by means of an interview schedule.
Results of the study showed that most of the respondents were males, with 60.58 mean age, married, and had only primary education. Due to net outmigration of family members, medium sized nuclear families (5-6 members) shrunk to small-sized ones (1-4 members). The respondents have had farming experience of at least 11 years, showed high membership affiliation with the local Farmers' Association but had a "no contact" type of relationship with their extension agent. Sole ownership of rice land parcels of sizes that were less than one hectare predominated. The nonplanters were significantly different from the planters in two aspects - most of them were absentee landlords and had a higher number of neighboring abandoned rice land parcels.
The planters enjoyed a higher farm income when compared to the nonplanters but lagged in annual income (excluding rice). For all respondents, annual income (excluding rice) accounted for at least 90 percent of total income. The seriousness of the problems in water and farm labor insufficiency were significantly higher for the nonplanters. All respondents showed high dependence on hired labor, which was not easily purchased.
The respondents were quite homogenous in terms of land preparation and agronomic practices: the use of four-wheeled tractors, fertilizers, and pesticides (although not always at recommended rates) prevailed. Manual weeding and harvesting was common. The majority of the nonplanters were biased toward rehabilitating their idle rice land with other crops like rubber, oil palm, and cocoa principally because of the high risk factor associated with rice growing and the relatively lower level of satisfaction obtained in terms of rice yield, income from rice, and the rice price subsidy offered.
The chi-square and t-tests showed that there was a significant relationship between the farming status (whether a planter or a nonplanter) and the following variables: absentee landowner, distribution of abandoned neighboring rice land, and insufficiency of farm labor.
The Discriminant Functions indicated that the best linear prediction for land abandonment consists of the variable absentee landowner, multiple ownership of a single parcel of rice land, status of neighboring rice land, size of rice land parcel, and sufficiency of farm labor. lt reflected a 95 percent accuracy in reproducing the actual survey classification of the respondents into their relevant subpopulations (i.e., planters or nonplanters) based on the farmers' demo-socioeconomic and technical characteristics.
