Abstract
Many researchers on rural Northeast Thailand have found a kind of joint farming which is mostly formed by households of parents and children. This is considered as a cooperative action of close kin in order to maintain their productivity. However, no study has been made of why they adopt such a form of cooperation with each other. The author investigated every case of joint farming in a village in 1989 and categorized the reasons for joint farming. An interview survey of elderly villagers was also carried out to learn the characteristics of joint farming in the old days. The author has found that most cases of cooperation are formed to cope with economic conditions both inside and outside of the farm households. As a result, the reasons for joint farming are affected by the changing economic situation, especially the migration of the young labor force and the shortage of farmland. The new economic conditions have also affected the motivation of cooperation between parents and children. Many cases are formed in which parents utilize their land ownership to force their children to offer help with labor. The cooperation is now formed as an economic contract between individual economic units rather than as a communal unity of close kin.
