Thesis Abstract of AGS Students

Land tenure and land rent systems in the Chiang Mai Valley

Chotirat Vimuktalob (1988)

The objective of this study is to examine changes and details in the land tenure and land rentsystems in the Chiang Mai Valley emphasizing the relationships between land rental and cropping

systems, equitability among different tenurial groups and their use of factors of production. 228 households in 15 villages of 5 districts were interviewed in the 1987 crop year.

It was found that land rent systems differed among cropping systems. In the cropping system consisting of rice followed by low capital cash crops, rent was usually in the form of share-cropping while in the cropping systems having rice followed by capital intensive cash crops or by other minor crops, there was more incidence of cash rent. In the wet season, rent was paid in rice by either one-half or one-third or in a fixed quantity of production. In the dry season, rent was either paid in cash, shared crops or was not collected.

With respect to changes in land rent systems, it was found that after the Farm Rent Control Act 1974, two aspects of changes could be documented. Firstly there had been some changes in land rental rates from the traditional one-half sharecropping to other rates e.g. one-third, fixed cash, dry-season rent. Landlords paid more items of inputs than in the past. Secondly, some landlords increased their management of rented land. Previous control over land use for tenants was in many places being taken over by landlords.

The comparison of returns to tenants, owner cultivators and landlords in the cropping system having rice followed by the principal cash crop using low capital revealed that the one-third sharecropping system was the best rent system in terms of equitability among the three groups as the returns per rai were very comparable. The fixed rent system was also found to be another good rent system in that some tenants were found to eam more than their landlords. The one-half sharecropping system for the wet season with an additional rent in the dry season was found to be the most inequitable rent arrangement in this cropping system. In the system consisted of rice followed by capital intensive cash crops or by minor cash crops, tenants eamed more than their landlords. However, the sample size was rather small for the rice-minor crop system.

In general, kinship was an important factor to alleviate the inequitability in returns between tenants and landlords. When comparing the use of cash inputs among owneroperators and tenants, no significant level of input use was detected among them except in the production group with rice-capital intensive cash crops who were mostly in the fixed cash rent system. Tenants in this system were also found to spend significantly more cash inputs than tenants in other rent systems.

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