Market oriented off-season mango production in Thailand
1999
Ari Wibunphong | Songsak Sibunchit (Chiang Mai Univ., Chiang Mai (Thailand). Faculty of Agriculture. Multiple Cropping Center)
Off-season market-oriented production of fruit crops is becoming an attractive strategy to farm producers. The system requires high investment and proves too risky for the resource poor farmers to adopt thus it is mainly possible for large farmers. The paper attempts to prove the point and illustrate farmers' market orientation to production via a case study in the Chiang Mai Province. Two farmers were chosen for in depth study. One possessed more resource and better management than the other. The farmers were members of the mango producers' group which established in 1992 to produce early season mango so as to avoid low price and production risk and to improve quality. The expansion of the members reflects success of the enterprise. The case study shows that the richer farmer obtained high returns on his resources and management while the other's was marginal. However, both earned remarkable returns as compared to their previous production methods. They proved to be market-oriented and planned their production accordingly but at the different degrees of market perspective. High capital requirement of the technology had limited the resource-poor farmer's mango productivity and thus low return. The application of flowering Stimulants including chemicals helped promote fruiting in the off-season, but without proper management the practice could have reverse effect on the long run production and income. The off-season production technology at present is still high cost and not stable, so the viability of the off-season mango production depends on development of the precision and cost effectiveness technology.
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