ATTITUDE OF THAI FARMERS TOWARD AEC : A CASE STUDY OF RATCHABURI FARMERS

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study the adaptation and attitude of Thai farmer in Ratchaburi province toward AEC. This is a survey research using questionnaire by providing alternatives of adaptation to 382 farmers in Ratchaburi province who has age over 20 years old. Use Two-Stage Cluster Random Sampling to four districts in Ratchaburi province then use Simple Random Sampling to selected district. Samples are obtained by number of people. Statistical analysis provided in this research are such as frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean and standard deviation. Inferential statistics are mainly used to compare the difference of mean of attitude level with t-test analysis of Ratchaburi farmers toward AEC.

The results in this study were found that 180 farmers select to cultivate rice as the traditional way meanwhile others 202 choose to plant other crops or mixed farming. Positive attitude of farmers toward AEC has arithmetic mean of 3.32 which means neutral level. Negative attitude of farmers has arithmetic mean by about 3.48 which is in high level. The result of comparing positive and negative attitude levels has been shown that positive and negative attitude levels of farmers who will cultivate other crops or will do the mixed farming are significantly greater than farmers who will do the traditional way. Socio-economic factors which have influence to the alternative of adaptation are mainly years of education, district, frequency in the using of new method to reduce cost or increase yield and the rate of local leaders (p-value < 0.05).