THE Agricultural Land Reform Office’s (ALRO) land reclamation campaign faces a raft of problems, including insufficient land for distribution to landless farmers, the practice of land reclamation and the campaign’s effect on local communities.

An order from the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) to reclaim ALRO land was widely cheered as a solution to the chronic problem of ineffective law enforcement contending with powerful illegal landowners.

However, stakeholders have admitted the designated land will not be enough for the more than 400,000 farmers on the waiting list and the operation may unavoidably affect people who live on land.

ALRO secretary-general Sunsern Aggutamanus said problems with law enforcement have left the agency unable to take the land from powerful landowners, adding that was the reason the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry proposed the NCPO use its special powers to seize land. But he admitted the order would not solve all the problems.

“We proposed this order because in the past, if we wanted to take land back from illegal landowners, we had to sue them first and it would take years to get an order from the court forcing them to return the land,” Sunsern said.

“But this order can turn things around, as it allows us to seize the land first, and if landowners want to protect their claim, they can sue us later. Moreover, very few landholders have legal deeds to the disputed land, so we have a greater chance of winning the case.”

Sunsern said another reason to use the special powers of the NCPO to reclaim land was because it was hard for ALRO officers to fight the influence of powerful landholders on their own.

“Even with the support from military and police officers under the NCPO order, it will still be difficult to get some plots of land from powerful landowners,” he said.

Last Tuesday, the NCPO issued the order to retake ALRO lands that had been occupied by wealthy parties and redistribute them to the landless farmers.

However, Sunsern admitted that problems still remained.

“We have to distribute the land to the local people first, so we will get around 100,000 rai [16,000 hectares] of land to give to the landless farmers on our list. According to our current standards, we will give five rai of land to each family, so there will be around 20,000 families receiving land from this operation,” he said.

Eathipol Srisawaluck, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Law, praised the order as major progress in solving ALRO land problems, but added it would not be enough to fulfil the agency’s mission to provide land for all affected farmers.

Eviction fears in Surat Thani

“I understand the land shortage problem is very hard to solve. This order can help to retake a large portion of land that can be given to many farmers, but more efforts are needed to secure even more for landless people,” Eathipol said.

He suggested that ALRO should get more land by purchasing it from private landowners – and, more importantly, ALRO should ensure that people live sustainably on the land and do not sell it.

Meanwhile, Suraphol Songrak, a Southern Farmers Union executive committee member from Klong Sai Pattana in Surat Thani, expressed concern that his community would be evicted as a result of the campaign.

“We support the government decision to take back the land from the capitalists, but we want ALRO to make it clear that our people will not be forced to relocate from our land,” Suraphol said.

Klong Sai Pattana community, which has 210 residents, is situated on an ALRO plot from which the palm plantation company, Jiu Kang Jui Pattana, was ordered to return 1,440 rai of land to the agency in 2014. So far ALRO has been unable to reclaim the land so it is now on the list to be reclaimed under the NCPO order.

Suraphol said previously ALRO intended to move everyone and redistribute the land, but he argued the plots that ALRO promised to give to people as compensation would be too small and the relocation would destroy the community.

“If ALRO forces us to move, where can we go and who will take care of our crops? They also promised to redistribute the land to us, but it will not be enough because each family will get only five rai of land. We cannot sustainably make a living from such a small-sized plot,” he said.

“We would like ALRO to let us manage the land instead. As of now we have a system to look after community members and prevent the land from being transferred to capitalists.”