NTFPs on Nakai Plate.. - TABI

4.2 Household interviews
4.2.1 The role of NTFP’s in the family economy
The third method we used to assess the importance of NTFP’s was a short questionnaire
survey, focusing on the family economy, interviewing 100 families in 5 villages. NTFP’s are
the most important source of cash income (40%) over all villages (see table 5). They are
especially important for those villages that live on the edge of the forest, i.e. Ban Khon Ken
(73%), Ban Ka-Oy (60%) and Ban Sopphene (68%). In Ban Nakai Neua and Thalang, many
families have off-farm income sources such as salaries or income from trading.
These data differ from those of the group ranking exercises described in paragraph 4. We
tend to think that the family based interviews are more reliable than the group discussions. It
could be that group meetings are dominated by village leaders who are often wealthier and
have a larger family size, hence tend to collect more NTFP’s and buy less rice than the
average family. It is likely that selling of livestock is considered shameful and not readily
admitted to in group discussions, hence underestimated. The truth is probably somewhere in
the middle. At any rate NTFP’s are without doubt the most important source of income over
all families.
More than half of the cash income was spent on buying rice in 1996. In Ban Ka-Oy and Ban
Sop Phene, families needed to buy much more rice than could be bought from their cited cash
income. It seems likely that rice shortages did already occur in many families in 1996.
Table 5: Average family budgets, 5 villages, Nakai plateau, 1996.
Village 9eo;o7v[7q; Khonken Kaoy Nakai Sopphene Thalang AVERAGE %
Total No Families 9eo;o7v[7q; 35 25 57 40 41
NTFP's 1996 7 x f !__* 116,457 141,627 84,407 35,495 62,722 82,926 41%
Livestock laf]Ph' 42,583 95,079 130,449 16,750 21,463 64,914 32%
Off-farm ovd9kdg7njv'd}d 0 0 110,246 0 118,130 56,199 28%
GROSSVALUE ]kpIa[ma's,qf 159,040 236,706 325,102 52,245 202,315 204,038 100%
Rice*** g0Qk -48,060 -397,786 -33,025 -172,215 -147,293 -133,519 -65%
NET VALUE ]kpIa[ 110,980 -161,080 292,076 -119,970 55,023 70,519 35%
*) Amount of money needed to buy rice (negative values) or surplus rice sold (positive values), based on a
calculation of surpluses after family consumption, calculated as 300 kg/head/year.
Because of the exceptional floods of 1996, the amount of rice produced for 1997 will be
extremely low and families have to spend more money on buying rice. They increased their
income from NTFP’s and sold more cattle (see table 6). It should be noted that these data
were collected in March 1997, which means another 6-7 months will pass before the next rice
harvest will happen. Most likely villagers will try to sell more livestock and collect more
forest products to buy rice in the mean time. Many families will face serious rice shortages
this year.