Creative Research and Agricultural Personnel Potential Development of the Chiang Mai Community to ASEAN Community

Abstract

The objectives of the research were to study potentiality and to promote creative research and agricultural personnel potential development of the Chiang Mai community to ASEAN Community based on the Philosophy of the Sufficiency Economy in promoting the production and the agricultural product processing in the Chiang Mai community. This research was conducted as a qualitative research by using the primary information of the groups of the farmers participating in the project voluntarily and screened by local administrative organizations from 25 districts, 20 agricultural communities in Chiang Mai Province to have only 6 groups after screened according to the criteria regulated to bring the 6 groups to develop. The research was divided into 4 phases. The first phase was to study the primary information of the agricultural personnel. The second phase was to find guidelines to develop the agricultural personnel. The third phase was to try out the guidelines for developing the agricultural personnel. The fourth phase was to evaluate by comparing the findings of the research to ASEAN Community. The research was carried out based on the participation action research (PAR) by analyzing the potentiality by using 3 indicators: quality production quantity, net incomes, and production areas. The discussion was described in the descriptive way to express the potentiality of the farmers’ groups to be able to find the guidelines for developing the economic systems of the Chiang Mai community to ASEAN Community creatively. 

According to the study on the potentiality of the 6 groups initially selected and used to develop their additional knowledge, the production quantity of these farmers’ groups increased more than 10%, in the additional potentiality, their net incomes increased at least 7%, and in the potential development of the additional production areas, only 2 sample groups adding potentiality and expending the production areas: a rice organic production group in Sanpaton District and a longan production group in Saraphi District, the areas were used more than before and allocated to do the integrated farming. The research findings showed that all of the 6 groups succeeded in participating the potential development project. The first thing the groups had to do was to have good leaders and creative ideas, accept changes and be eager to constantly search for new knowledge. In addition, the group had to be united and honest. As a result, the farmer groups that joined the community enterprise groups were successful based on the Philosophy of the Sufficiency Economy. In this regard, the development of the potentiality of the agricultural personnel in the Chiang Mai community had to take into account the needs of farmers as the main focus in order to lead to the development to meet the needs and problems of farmers in each aspect to continue to develop through a joint mentoring system with knowledgeable people to provide the community with professional learning that was appropriate for them by recommending to use the system to solve problems along the value chain step by step in order to increase the value of the community products to compete at the ASEAN level in the future.