Young people's willingness to farm under present and improved conditions in Thailand

Studies of young people's willingness to farm usually analyse their plans based on the resources available to them, or their hopes if they had access to more resources, but rarely study the two jointly. However, in newly industrialized countries in Asia, such joint assessments are needed to disentangle the extent to which young people's limited involvement in farming is due to lack of interest or to the fact that they see no way to get round the obstacles to starting the kind of farming they want to practice. This study analysed the vision of 86 young rural people in Prachinburi Province, Thailand, concerning farming, their plan to farm under prevailing conditions and their willingness to become a farmer if more opportunities to start farming were available. More than two-thirds of the interviewees were not farming at the time of the interview, but half planned to start farming, either part or full time, in the coming decade. One-third of the interviewees said that if they had better opportunities to start farming, they would reconsider their current plans to work in non-agricultural sectors and instead become full-time farmers. Public policies aimed at increasing the number of young people who become farmers should consequently not take the prevailing lack of engagement in farming by many young rural people as a given. Such policies should not only support young people who already plan to farm, but also those who would be willing to farm if they had better opportunities to do so