Results (
Thai) 2:
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Although the contribution of agricultural sector to the national economy is decreasing with the figure of only 11.3% in 1994, agriculture is still important in Thailand, with about 60% of the population is involved in agriculture in 1994. The per-capita income of farmer in the agricultural area is comparatively low. The major agricultural produces come from crops including rice, rubber, maize, cassava, sugar cane, soybean, mungbean and oil palm (Table 2).
As for land use, the land occupied by agriculture in 1993 amounted to 23.6 million hectares or 46% of the whole country. Within this agricultural land, about 11.8 million hectares or 50% were used for rice production, 5.7% million hectares or 24% for field crops, 3.1 million hectares or 13.1% for fruit trees and 0.13 million hectares or 0.5% for vegetable and flower production, 0.8 million hectares were used for livestock and the rest was devoted to housing area, idle land and other crops which amounted to 2.0 million hectares.
The trend of agricultural production in Thailand lies with the increase in horticultural production which can be exported. In the NESDP number 8 it is expected the change from grain production to crops of high export potential or high value crops. Also the new picture of agricultural sector in Thailand will have more production in the agro-industrial produces. The driving factors in changing the agricultural production system to the new structure of producing high value crops are due to the competition in value and quality of the produces in the international market. The increase in production cost especially in the labour cost makes farmers to look for new crops of high value than confining to their traditional crops.
In future, one will find the agricultural production in Thailand changes from the traditional production to use new technology for production of high value crops. The trend for consistent increase in production may be seen in rice and crops, using raw materials such as oil crop, cassava products, maize, sugarcane in agro-industrial manufacture. Those that may rapidly be increased in both production and export are fruits and vegetables, shrimp and sea food product, frozen chicken and other meat products.
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