The use of unsuitable land for agriculture have been problematic to land degradation and impact to the farmer's living  -  about  30 millions people which are the most  of the people in Thailand Land degradation caused to low yields and also to the farmer's income.  Comparing to the natural resources inThailand, the problematic of land degradation covers a very large areas. The problem of land degradation for erosion and soil organic matter deficiency have occurred  on  134  million   rai or 41 % of total areas in Thailand and 98 million rai or 30% of total areas in Thailand , respectively.  Not only erosion and soil organic matter deficiency but also saline soil, acid soil, organic soil and sandy soil covered about 192 million rai.   Land Development Department  [LDD]  can not implement all over the problematic land due to lack of staffs which are now only 2,000 people. So it is necessary for the farmers and people to participate and work together to take care of natural resources.

Who is the volunteer soil doctors?

Ministry of agriculture and cooperatives has the policy guidelines to build up the volunteer people to serve land development plans in the villages called   " volunteer soil doctors"   Volunteer soil doctors programmed has been established from 1995 to present.  At present,  there are about 55,000 volunteer soil doctors in LDD.   They have to operate between farmers and LDD,  to demonstrate an appropriate technologies to the neighboring committees and to have the activity with LDD, for example - to conduct the demonstration plot for Vetiver propagation.  Due to the fact that LDD has more project than before, such as the increasing yield production project, the transfer of technology to Tumbon level project, the agricultural development project, the irrigation project and the nutural water improvement project. All of these projects aim to the participatory approaches between farmers and community which LDD officer can not operate. So volunteer soil doctors can support them .

LDD  established network of volunteer soil doctors project,  in order to increase the efficiency of volunteer soils doctors and to support LDD activity and government. LDD improved and updated personal data in digital system in order to establish soil doctors network in Tambon level, to    support the policy of Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperative and also to develop network know-how of volunteers soil doctors in many area.