The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

l'ATTEHNS OF LAND 0\VNEHSilll' IN CENTI\AL THAILAND 265
The structure and conduct in the operations of the agricultural land
market suggest tentatively that the landlords are not exploiting the
farmers by charging rentals over the competitive norm. Landlords
are too heterogeneous to be able to set prices in concert. In most cases,
they are relatives of the tenants and/or neighbors living together in the
same village, with relationships which are necessarily personalized and
unique. Variations in the quality of the land, even within a single
village, also discourage collusive rent-fixing by the landlords. Stated
rental rates are diverse, reflecting the land's relative location, soil quality
and access to irrigation or flood waters. Although the elasticity of demand
for rentable land cannot be measured, the cultivators are vividly aware
of alternatives to renting village land, such as urban migration or seeking
new land, activities which they often recommend to their children. The
relatively short duration of rental arrangements reflects the short term,
cyclical nature of family land requirements; it may evidence that the
land rental market is functioning effectively not, as some have argued,
an insecurity in the tenure rights of the farmers.
Conclusions
The evidence of this study does not support the conventional wisdom
that equality is worsening and that land sales, absentee ownership
and mortgage losses are increasing in the Central Plain. The conventional
wisdom bas been widely accepted, however, because the conditions
of the Burmo-Malthusian model seem to hold in contemporary Thailand
and because such adverse consequences are the logical outcome of the
dynamics of the model. The major conditions of the model will be
briefly discussed.
Passing of the land frontier: The land suitable for paddy cultivation
bas been largely exhausted in the Central Plain.
Population growth: During the six decades covered in this study,
the agricultural population has quadrupled. The power of compound
growth on a fixed land base has a prima facie logic supporting the
conventional wisdom.
Fixed technology:
The state of the arts of rice cultivation bas been
~~atic, with the exception of the local selection of \.Jetter rice vari~ties,