Abstract
Farmers in Thailand can establish farmers groups as previous stage organizations for agricultural cooperatives and those groups can receive agricultural technical services by the Thai government. Farmers groups are the smallest organizations which provide financial services in rural Thailand. This paper analyzes their financial activities in order to find their some business advantages among rural financial institutions. The result is that they tend to easily admit loans to member farmers and they do not have so good financial performances. Consequently,farmers groups are expected to focus their business mainly on agricultural technical services. If some of these groups hope to develop financial services,it is necessary for them to prepare basic financial statements yearly like agricultural cooperatives and to improve their business activities along the common rules of financial institutions.