Identifying farm risk management strategies of rubber farmers: A study in Southern Thailand

This study aims to identify and analyze the farm risk management strategies of rubber farmers in Southern Thailand. The study also provides efforts to examine the factors influencing risk management strategies in rubber farming in Thailand. The data were collected from a cross-sectional household survey conducted in Songkhla and Phatthalung Provinces of Thailand. A standardized and structured questionnaire was used to gather data from a total of 400 respondents. A number of statistcal tools such as descriptive statistics and multiple regression model were employed to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the rubber farmers adopted 8 (eight) main strategies to manage the risks in rubber farming, namely i) diversification in production, ii) market management, iii) labor and contract management, iv) decreasing production costs, v) production planning, vi) increasing non-farm employment, vii) debt management and viii) using high frequency tapping systems. The study also identified a number of factors including age, gender, level of education and farming experience of the farmers, number of household members, non-farm labor, off-farm labor, hired-labor, household income, debt, landholding size, participation in replanting scheme with RAOT, and membership in farmer institution that affect significantly (with the confidence level > 90%) the risk management strategies of the rubber farmers. Finally, the study recommends that the government should support and promote the research and development on risk management strategies in agriculture sector so that the farmers and farmer institutions can achieve more knowledge and efficiency to cope up successfully various risks in rubber farming in Thailand.