Abstract:
Agriculture is very important in any developing country, including Thailand, as it could provide her people with suitable income for familys expenses and good standard of living. At present, Thai farmers find it difficult to maintain their occupation because most of them actually have none or just a small piece of land which is not fit for any effective horticultural project. This situation makes the farmers unable to bargain with middlemen, and then cause the countrys social, political and economic systems collapse. The government must urgently step in and quickly solve the problem. Being accepted internationally, land reform is an effective technique to solve such a problem because its purpose is to help farmers have rights and holdings in land for agriculture. However, distribution without improvement could not serve the purpose of land reform. In order to accomplish it, the government, at the same time, should promote some necessary projects such as plans for developing agricultural loan, production and marketing of farming products, promotion plans for agricultural co-operation, providing modern farming technology to farmers, improvement of land rental system for fair and secured agreement, control of labor employment, landscape planning, as well as improvement of welfare, public utilities, education and public health services for farmers. The first step in land reform process is that land must be acquired for the purpose of reformation. Therefore, it is necessary to have some kinds of legal measure for acquisition of land, including purchase and expropriation by government. In order to regulate a proper method of such acquisition, the government should conduct researches studying all circumstances and problems which could occur in the future. Then, the ultimate end of land reform (land to the tillers) would possibly be fulfilled. This research studies the following subjects: - sort of land, both state-owned land and private owned land, which would be acquired for reformation; and the authority to take care and make profit out off it. - legal measures supporting agricultural land reform, such as prohibition of transferring, partitioning or creating a charge on land in a land reform area; imposing rights or holdings in land; rental control; and landscape planning for agricultural purpose. - legal measures for acquisition of state-owned land for agricultural land reform. - legal measures for acquisition of private-owned land for agricultural land reform by purchasing and expropriation. The research concludes: - that the government should provide regulations prohibiting partitioning of land in a land reform area for a period of time unless obtaining a permission of the Agricultural Land Reform Committee, in order to prevent any attempts by land-owners to avoid having their lands purchased or expropriated by the Agricultural Land Reform Office. - that the government should enforce the principle of imposition of rights in land which is already enacted in the Land Code, in order to avoid collective purchase of Land by capitalists. - that farmers should have opportunities to own state-owned land acquired for agricultural land reform by a credit purchase and to join the land development project. - that the Agricultural Land Reform Office should be empowered to purchase or expropriate land whose owner has no intention to cultivate any further; or whose owner is incapable to cultivate the whole of it by himself; or whose co-owner in the same family, alike the owner, does not cultivate or incapable to cultivate by himself. All these owners should be under the same regulations provided for agriculturists in connection with the purchase and expropriation of land, in order to prevent land-owners who do not cultivate their land by themselves to avoid having their land purchased or expropriated by partitioning their land. If all mentioned legal measures are clearly enacted and effectively enforced, the agricultural land reform in Thailand will be finally fulfilled.