World Food Policy
Table 1. Key Trends in the Thai Agriculture and Food Processing Sectors
Time
period Major policy components Economic development factors
1850–
1930 • Expansion of rice frontier and
development of cash cropping
rice monoculture • Opening of economy to interna-
tional (especially European) trade.
Including trade and extraterritori-
ality agreements with Britain and
other nations
• Government assistance with ir-
rigation and land clearing proj-
ects
• End of royal monopoly on rice
trade
• Ending of corvee labor system and
slavery encouraged free peasant
landholder class to enter cash econ-
omy through rice trade
• Inward migration of Chinese mer-
chants who as middlemen helped
develop the rice trade.
1930–
1960
• Emphasis on national self-
sufficiency
• Export taxes introduced for rice
and tariff protection for other
agricultural crops
• These taxes fund beginning of
industrial development, partic-
ularly processing of agricultural
products
• Nationalist military governments
and Japanese occupation moved
trade focus from Europe to Asia
• Consolidation of rice trade into few
family firms with patronage from
Thai army and bureaucrats
• Agricultural share of GDP falls
from 50% to 40% in the 1950s
• Continuing expansion of rice
frontier meant little investment
in productivity or infrastruc-
ture
• Rice dominates agriculture oc-
cupying more than 70% of cul-
tivated areas and employing up
to two-third of total labor force
(1958)
• Main agricultural development
strategy expansion of irrigated
areas
1960–
1973
• Investment in agricultural di-
versification and moderniza-
tion • Reorientation from state enterpris-
es toward private (and foreign) in-
vestment to develop the economy
• Diversification to crops for in-
10
dustrial inputs, e.g. sugar cane
and jute • Beginning of mass influx of US Aid
and military spending as well as
business investment
• Land devoted to crops other • Establishment of NESDB and be-