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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

these settlers have by now received title deeds, allowing the original settlers
to benefit financially after long-term occupation as was envisaged when the
schemes were set up.

A much larger programme to provide land to smallholders is the
Agricultural Land Reform scheme, which since the 1980s, has allocated 36

million rai (11% of the total national land area) for settlement by well over
2 million smallholders. Nearly all land allocated was ‘degraded forest̓
transferred to the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO) by the Royal Forest
Department. Over a period of twenty years ALRO established projects,
province by province, arranging roads and facilities for settlers with cooperation
from other government agencies. Plots were allocated up to a maximum of 50 rai
per person (the average was 16 rai). The land is to be used for home and farm.
Rights of occupation and use are transferrable to family members but cannot
in principle be sold to others. The original recipients or their descendants must
in principle return land to ALRO when they no longer wish to occupy the land
in compliance with the conditions of tenure, but in practice few plots have been
returned to ALRO and rights have often been sold informally to other persons
resulting in a divergence between regulations and practice at the local level
that officials struggle to resolve.

The rules of the Agricultural Land Reform programme may have been
difficult to enforce from the outset in areas where land formally released by
the Royal Forest Department was already occupied, bought and sold de facto.
Conditions intended to favour landless smallholders were circumvented by
registration to relatives and other nominees. Nevertheless the scheme put a
brake on conversion to non-agricultural uses and has kept the price at which
rights are informally bought and sold down to a level that is realistic in terms

of rental value and farm profits. To this extent it has contributed to stability of
smallholder communities in newly-occupied areas and the number of farms on
ALRO land may still be around 2 million.
The era of state provision of rural land for landless families has by now
almost come to an end. Few remaining areas are suitable for allocation by ALRO
and the state is caught between conflicting objectives: support for eco-agriculture

and rural livelihoods; protection of forest and natural environments; and promotion
of commercial activities that help Thailand to maintain or advance its position
in world markets.

94 The Value of Land in Thailand Today

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