Agricultural Land Lease Law and Legal Awareness of Rice Agriculturists in Ratchaburi

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to 1) study legal measures concerning government agency’s land lease for agriculturists 2) investigate the level of awareness about agricultural land lease law of rice agriculturists in Ratchaburi province and 3) study supportive guidelines for agriculturists in Ratchaburi to act in accordance with the agricultural land lease law. To carry out the study, mixed research methodologies (for qualitative and quantitative data) were employed. For quantitative data, 391 rice agriculturists in Ratchaburi province were employed as respondents to queries. The in-depth interview was also used to gather qualitative information from 45 rice farmers. The findings revealed as follows:
1) The first land lease law is called ‘agricultural land lease control law’, B.E. 2493 (1950) that is intended to protect agricultural land tenants who have no land for agriculture. The second law is named ‘agricultural land lease control act’, B.E. 2517 (1974) that mainly awards ‘an organization’ a grant to be established to control land lease in sub-district, district and province. And also, the main authority of the organization is to set rates of land lease and to interpose some disputes over land lease. The agricultural land lease act was enacted in B.E.2524 (1981) as the third law that aims to solve problems of land lease for agriculturists in an increasingly efficient way. Since then, the agricultural land lease act was enacted in B.E. (2016) as the fourth law that has executed until now.
2) The level of awareness of agriculturists concerning agricultural land lease law in Ratchaburi is low with a value of .33 ( =.33).
3) The study induced the supportive guidelines for agriculturists in Ratchaburi to act in accordance with the agricultural land lease law regarding these issues: support from government agency, dissemination of knowledge about agricultural land lease law to agriculturists and board committee of all levels, measures to inspect camouflage land lease agreement and strengthening board committee in enacting land lease law in an effective and fair way.