ALRO secretary-general Sompong Intong disclosed that 200,000 rai (32,000 hectares) of land had been seized from illegal owners.

The seizures followed an order from the National Council for Peace and Order to tackle the problem and redistribute the seized land to landless farmers by the end of next year.

“From our inspection of a total 430,000 rai of targeted land, it can be proved that owners of 120,000 rai have legal land deeds and 30,000 rai was forestland. So we will have to reclaim the balance 280,000 rai of unlawfully acquired land. Currently, we have seized 200,000 rai,” Sompong stated.

The NCPO order to reclaim the land was issued on July 5 and aims to solve the problem of rich and powerful persons illegally acquiring ALRO land, which is supposed to be for landless farmers only.

The operation has been under way for five months.

Sompong said 5,900 rai was recently seized at the Thanathon orange orchard and the Sai Thong orange orchard in Chiang Mai.

“The former owners of the orange orchards willingly returned the land to ALRO, so we will distribute the land to the original farmers through an agricultural cooperative. The former owners still can buy the products from the cooperative,” he said.

“This way all orange farm workers will not lose their jobs and the orange plantation still can be preserved.”

The orange orchards were owned by the Thanathon Orange Farm Co and the Chiang Mai Mit Kaset Co. In September, the ALRO inspected the land and found the land ownership claims to be suspicious, and the land was seized this month.

The ALRO secretary-general revealed that for the other reclaimed land, the agency would distribute it to landless farmers via two methods: granting agricultural cooperatives to use the land for groups of farmers, and giving land to individual farmers. Individuals will receive five rai for farming and one rai to live on.

“We aim to finish this operation by October 2017, but we still face the problem of land owners not showing up when we summon them, and the slow land rights inspection process. Apart from these problems, everything is on its way,” Sompong said.

However, Suraphon Songrak, a resident of Ban Klong Sai Pattana in Surat Thani, stated that the endeavour faced many problems.

“Our community is situated on disputed ALRO land. This plot of land was illegally taken by an oil palm plantation company and the ALRO still has not successfully driven the illegal encroacher away,” Suraphon said.

“Meanwhile, the ALRO also insisted on applying the land distribution system, which does not suit our community, by granting only five rai of farming space per family. We are now bargaining with the authorities to distribute the land for use the right way according to local preferences, but we have not had any success.”

More than 70 families live in the Ban Klong Sai Pattana community. They handed in a petition to the Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister in July, calling on authorities to distribute the land to villagers according to their farming system.