Sale of fresh forage — a new cash crop for smallholder farmers in Yasothon, Thailand

This paper describes the emergence of a new cash-crop enterprise — the sale of fresh forage — for smallholder farmers in Yasothon, north-east Thailand. In 1999, a group of 13 farmers started to produce forages for sale to beef cattle producers and traders. By 2006, this had grown to the extent that more than 600 farmers were growing and selling fresh forage. A study was car-ried out to describe the forage-for-sale production system and to evaluate its profi tability and sus-tainability. Methods used included farmer group discussions, semi-structured interviews with indi-vidual farmers, weighing of forage samples and soil and plant analyses