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opportunities were greater in the urban areas than rural, although greatly diminished
compared with pre COVID conditions.
In addition, the diet of smallholder households is rarely affected by COVID-19 because they
still rely on food sources from the household production plot. Their source food depends on
farming and natural resources, food exchange in the community, and a variety of community
market sources.
Regarding remedies and assistance from the government program, We don't Leave Each Other,
members of the small-scale farmer households earning non-agricultural incomes were not
able to access many program remedies, despite both the upward revision of budget limit and
the refinement of the eligibility review process. This is because the Government does not
understand the life picture of multi-dimensional farmer households. Aiming to assist farmer
households based on the perception of one-dimensional agricultural households without
remedies for the farmer's household as a whole (which is typically based on a variety of
agricultural and non-agricultural sources) have left household members with non-agricultural
income sources from receiving assistance.
Subsequently, between July and September 2020, the researchers conducted a preliminary
review of the current local community situation through discussion with non-governmental
staff working closely with rural communities in a variety of sectors. Urban workers were the
first
to be severely affected, similar to the Asian economic crisis in 1997-98. However, due to
structural changes in the Thai economy, less urban workers are returning to rural communities
than during the Asian economic crisis. However, most local communities remain at economic
risk as pre-COVID. Monocultural agriculture that relies on foreign export markets, especially
vegetables and fruits, has been impacted by shrinking markets pre-COVID. We anticipate that
community economies will continue to falter. The production cycle will be affected by an
ongoing drought. Severe water shortages cause agriculture to encounter problems. So even
though some agricultural products, such as rice, cassava, will command higher prices,
production will be lowered by the drought.
While the large-scale market is stagnating, the online food product market is growing. But small
farmers find it difficult to access online markets, unlike large-scale food businesses. In addition,
the online marketing system demands mass production with consistent produce, large scale
farmers must have sufficient reserve funds which small scale farmers do not, to meet these
demands.
Subsequently, six agricultural communities based on six types of resource bases were studied
in depth, including utilizing a forum to discuss and process the data obtained from the
quantitative survey results; and verify the accuracy of the data simultaneously, including
through exchanging experiences. Each community presented planning oriented reports to the
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