Who will tend the farm? Interrogating the ageing Asian farmer

Farmers are ageing across Asia. This is presented as a ‘problem’ with implications for agricultural productivity, rural poverty and elderly care. Drawing on fieldwork in Thailand we interrogate this assumption. By examining farming as an activity within households that are occupationally diverse and spatially promiscuous, we argue that it is necessary to see farming not as a singular occupation but instead as part of livelihood complexes. We question the raw data used to construct the ageing farming problem and the causalities that flow from it, in rural Thailand and in smallholder farming across Asia.