HIS MAJESTY THE KING AND LAND RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT
Royal Develoment for Self Reliance
Poverty among farmers is an unsolved problem in most of the third-world countries. Attempts have been made to alleviate this difficulty. It seems that "self-reliance" is one answer to it, but there is no clear solution on how to make it implementable.
Successions of His Majesty's visits to rural areas throughout all regions of the country made him realize the problems of poverty and backwardness Thai farmers are facing. He is determined to improve and promote the well-being of poor farmers to become self-reliant and thus contribute to the strengthening of the whole country. He laid 8 principles to achieve the purpose:
- Not to give command or order to the people, but provide idea and information for them to choose voluntarily. They would be more satisfied with the outcome.
- Emphasis is made on self reliance based on the people own way before seeking outside help. He believes in free will and mind.
- People's participation is the answer to the community success.
- Willing to accept different opinion. All project are apt for modulation or modification. Things are flexible and plans can be changed to make them applicable to use. Not all projects have to be succeeded as planned.
- All projects have to go along with the local geographic, environment, culture, and their ways of life. Never to have any conflict with the traditional standard of living.
- Basic infrastructure for production is very important for long-term self reliance. Water resource must be sufficient for annual production to make the first step in providing themselves with enough food. The next step is to be able to communicate with the outside world, i.e., building roads for transportation of agricultural products. However, things must be done gradually and economically.
- "Knowledge" is the most important tool to overcome the rural shortcomings. New technology and its successful use would be an incentive for the farmers. However, care must be taken not to bring in too many expensive technologies that would change all their lifestyle or take away the labor force. This would result in more damage than benefit to the community.
- Implementation and application of agricultural technology must be continuously provided. It should be systematically operated by :
- People 's participation in the form of co-operatives to solve the community 's problems.
- Convince the community leader to participate in the projects while organize the working members to help the community development.
- Step-by-step progression of self-reliance should be made, starting from food productions for local consumption and move further to commercialize the surplus products and marketing. Basic accounting to manage their own business is also necessary.
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