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Agricultural Royal Projects.

The Royal Project's Ang Khang Highland Agricultural Research Station, Fang District, Chiang Mai Province.

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    Agricultural.
    In B.E. 2504 (A.D. 1961), His Majesty the King was greatly interested in agriculture which he regarded as the major occupation of the Thai population. He first launched experimental projects in modern agriculture in the grounds of Chitralada Villa, the Royal Residence. These early projects were modified into later development projects.
    On December 6, 1995, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO], humbly presented to His Majesty the "Agricola" gold medal, honouring him as an outstanding leader in agricultural and rural development. This distinguished award has been presented to only a small number of world leaders.
Thailand has always been an agricultural country. Even with the rapid advance of industrialization, the backbone of Thailand’s economy will remain for a long time yet in the agricultural section. In improving the welfare of the Thai people, therefore, His Majesty has always given a special emphasis to the production of primary commodities and especially of rice which has been the main staple of the country’s food as well as its main export product. As a symbolic gesture, His Majesty has revived since the early part of this Reign the Annual Ploughing Ceremony held in its full splendour on the ceremonial ground at the heart of the capital city. This is mainly a brahmin ceremony held just before the start of the rice-growing season. With elaborate procedure presided over by Their Majesties, the rice grains are blessed and distributed to farmers in various parts of the country who believe that mixing a few of these sacred grains with their main stock will produce a better crop. The revival of the ceremony is not meant to encourage belief in superstition but is regarded as symbolic of the supreme importance given by the Government to agricultural production.
His Majesty, in fact, shows the practical side of the ceremony by taking a portion of the sacred grains himself and have them planted in specially prepared fields within the grounds of the Royal Residence. These few experimental plots, however, are of enormous value for the has carefully instructed those in charge to try growing the various strains of rice grains in various kinds of land so that the most suitable strain could eventually be found for each particular kind of land. The use of the Palace grounds, however, is not limited in Agriculture to rice-growing. Having discovered at one time that the production of fresh milk is not widespread in Thailand and the country still depends upon imports of canned and powdered milk from abroad, His Majesty started in 1962 a pilot project of dairy farming in another part of the Palace grounds. Beginning with one bull and five milk cows, the Royal dairy farm grew to contain 39 cows in 1969. Meanwhile, he has noted down the results of his experiment and included all the details even concerning income and expenditure of dairy farming in a special pamphlet which is distributed to all those interested. In some particularly worthy cases, His Majesty has presented the interested parties with pedigree calves and heifers which have been bred and reared in the Palace compound.
With such close and thorough concern for the conditions of the country and people, His Majesty could not limit his interest in farming to basic production. He has learnt that dairy farmers found difficulties in distributing fresh milk in time before it becomes rancid because of the hot climate and the lack of refrigerating facilities, so in 1969, His Majesty started a pilot plant for powdered milk to go with the dairy farm within the Palace grounds. He chose to build the most inexpensive kind and again he circulated the results of the experiment including detailed cost and expenditure to all those interested with the accompanying advice that small dairy farmers should try to form co-operatives in order to limit individual outlays for such projects. In a similar manner, His Majesty has always known the plight of rice farmers who have to sell their crude grains at low prices to the mills, thus giving much profit to the middlemen at the expenses of the producers and the consumers alike. His Majesty has thus instructed experts to invent an inexpensive kind of rice mills which he has now built again within the Palace grounds and has started operation since early 1971. The mill, along traditional granaries and modern silos for experimentations in the storage of paddy, and projects which led to the designing of a husk-grinding machine which grinds up husks for mixing with waste organic and inorganic materials for use as fertilzers as well as a husk-compacting machine for compacting husks with dehydrated and chopped water hyacinth plants into sticks of experimental fuel. Other experimental projects on the grounds of the Royal Residence in Bangkok include animal husbandry and acquaculture projects, forest management and tissue culture for plant reproduction, cultivation of field plants for crop rotation and experiments in the growing of aeroponic and hydoponic vegetables. Indeed the various aforementioned experimental projects as well as irrigation methods and experiments in treatment of polluted water have all turned out to be very useful pilot projects which may have far-reaching consequences for the welfare of the Thai farmer.
His Majesty, of course, spends much more in this direction on projects on the spot outside the Palace grounds. The most typical example is perhaps the furthest away from the capital on the rolling hills of Northern Thailand inhabited mostly by the various Hill-Tribes. Though the programme of helping the Hill-Tribes has been in existence long before 1970. It was during that year that the Royal Hill-Tribes Project was officially initiated by His Majesty. This project is one of the best examples which illustrate His Majesty‘s initiative and leadership in the prevention and suppression of narcotics as well as His Majesty’s talent in solving the difficult and special problems in agriculture.
The highlands in the far Northern region of Thailand which comprise the mountainous border areas confronting Burma and Laos have been inhabited by various Hill-Tribes people having a population of 500,000 scattered over as many as 6,000 villages. Those mountaineers with opium as their basic feature of economics and cultures have practised “shifting cultivation” which includes both shifting of the site of cultivation and shifting of habitation This type of cultivation has caused serious damage by deforestation mostly by destroying invaluable trees in watershed areas. In addition to the above problem, the poppy cultivation of this area has created a world-wide problem of drug addiction which has to be solved by the Government.
From many Royal visits to those areas, His Majesty has realised this problem and also seen that those people, both of the Hill-Tribes and the lowland, have earned very small income and lived at a very low standard. Therefore, His Majesty and the Government, together with many other working units have tried to eliminate those problems by making plans which have for their aim to arouse feelings of patriotism among the Hill-Tribes and giving them the necessary ability to develop, from the economic viewpoints, by producing crops that will help to ensure their economic stability.
With the establishment of four Highland Agricultural Research Stations and eight Highland Agricultural Extension Stations with numerous satellite villages, the intensive training of Hill-Tribes people on modern and appropriate agricultural methods has been carried out. Research and demonstrations on the growing of cash crops such as coffee and kidney-beans, animal breeding techniques including fish culture have been conducted. In addition transportation and marketing of agricultural products, especially those that are easily bruised, have been carefully studied. His Majesty’s programmes have been successful to the extent that within a decade of its inception, agricultural methods normally practised in the lowlands have replaced the centuries old method of slash-and-burn cultivation which have destroyed vast areas of valuable forest reserves. Moreover, the programme now embraces introductory stages of activities ranging from animal husbandry, wet and dry cultivation of rice and other cash crops such as coffee, tobacco, soybean and corn, to production of preserved fruits and vegetables that in stages would alleviate the hardship and suffering of this poorer sector of the rural population whose standard of living is close to the margin of subsistence.
Reforestation projects are also a major concern with a goal for replenishing vandalized forests for the preservation of watersheds and natural reservoirs. The growing success of the programme has also served to eliminate gradually the growth of opium poppies which used to be widespread among the Hill-Tribes of Thailand, for the agricultural incomes earned through the programme substantially exceed the price which Hill-Tribes people used to acquire through the selling of opium. For this reason, His Majesty’s programme has received enormous assistance and support from international organisations of all kinds which are interested in narcotic drug abuse control and has ever been taken as a model upon which similar programmes of crop substitution have been instituted in other countries afflicted by problems associated with illegal opium growing and deadly narcotics production.
His Majesty has also from time to time invited the Ambassadors of various governments, who have contributed to the Royal Hill-Tribes Programme through monetary means or the donation of plants, trees, equipments or materials; to accompany him on inspection trips. Such trips may involve transportation by helicopters, cars, or long treks over mountainous trails in order that the diplomats may see at first-hand their Governments’ kind generosity. His Majesty will also give Royal explanations and answers to their questions on these important but informal tours.
His Majesty’s ingenuity and intellectual leadership in analysing the problems of land reclamation and the usage of arable land to its fullest content led to the instigation of land development projects with infrastructures necessary for agriculture such as the construction of weirs and dams for watershed reform and flood control, cropping and pasture development, farm ponds and fish ponds, as well as breeding of livestock and utilization of waste products for improvement of top soil. Treatment of polluted water by natural methods such as the controlled growth of water plants to absorb chemical wastes in order to improve the capability of acquaculture is also of major concern to His Majesty.
The advocacy of joint ownership of land by farmers’ groups to prevent transference of land tenure into the hands of absentee landlords and financiers and advocacy of co-operative villages in which members and their families are given the right to till the land for perpetuity while the governing board of the co-operative is responsible for marketing, purchasing of necessary seeds, crops, foodstuffs and agricultural equipments or utensils for the members were realized in the Land Development Projects on a co-operative basis at Hoob-Kapong and Dhon Khun Huai in Phetchaburi Province, Nong Plub in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province and Thung Lui Lai in Chaiyaphum Province. Such projects have provided farming families with permanent and sufficient land to work and to live on, thus eliminating shifting cultivation and illegal settlements while promoting agricultural activities that have procured the highest possible yields. They have also provided a model for governmental co-operative village programmes along the lines as those initiated by His Majesty the King.
Mention must also be made of His Majesty’s initiative in devising the Artificial Rain-making Project to induce rainfall in arid areas in order to sustain crops beset by drought and his promoting of the digging of drainage canals most of which are designed to mitigate flooding in vast areas of paddy land and some of which are designed to mitigate flooding in vast areas of paddy land and some of which are designed to reclaim swamp land for allocation into co-operative villages under an integrated scheme of land and community development to enhance the livelihood and well being of the people of Thailand. Moreover, His Majesty has also provided large tracts of land for the establishment of many regional Agricultural Research and Development Centres where various government agencies concerned with agricultural problems are allotted with plots of land in order to study various issues applicable to that particular region. His Majesty also lends the benefits of his experience by advising the management committee of the various centres on topics ranging from the principles of research and development, acquaculture and animal husbandry to training and propagation of information on agricultural techniques and technologies resulting in a rapid increase in the income and prosperity of his people.
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