Quality of Life of Thai Farmers: A Case Study of Suphanburi Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research are 1) to study the quality of life of the farmers in Suphanburi 2) to suggest the farmers in Suphanburi the ways to sustain the development of quality of life

            The qualitative research is used for this research to study from the documents, theories, the involved research documents and in-dept interview. The concept of this research is a case study. In-dept interview is the research tool to collect data. The key informants are farmers who are community leaders, rural philosophers, involved government officers, private organizations, and scholars. There are all together 27 people.

            The results of this research show that 1) most of the farmers in Suphanburi still lack good quality of life concerning economy, education, health, environment, culture, information, society and family, as well as well-fare and stability. They have a lot of debts due to high cost of production, labor cost, land rent, and high level of chemical use. 2) the ways to sustain the development of quality of life are as follows: (1) to specify the lands for rice agriculture to avoid the flood of rice product; (2) to develop the technology and innovation for agriculture to be various, modern, and suitable for the content of lands; (3) to create the network organization to solve the problems and process management and (4) to support the people in the communities to be the community enterprise or cooperative to increase the efficiency of the sustainable self-management.