The Retreat of Agricultural Lands in Thailand

Abstract

For much of the last century, the expansion of agriculture was a dominant force transforming Thailand’s landscapes, but since the 1990s the dominant ― yet often overlooked ― trend is one of agricultural retreat. This shift started in the 1960s and 1970s and is most intense in provinces of the central region where urbanization has proceeded rapidly. However, the decline of agricultural lands can now be seen in diverse geographical contexts in all regions of the country. Using secondary sources and recent fieldwork conducted in northern Phetchabun province, the paper describes three types of agricultural decline occurring in Thailand: private conversion to other land uses, land confiscation by the state and voluntary abandonment of agricultural lands. Although the latter type has rarely been reported in Thailand, it was found to be of particular importance in the study region, at least from the 1980s to early 2008. Its existence is explained by a cost‐price squeeze in maize cultivation and the difficulty to find profitable and marketable replacement crops in rainfed areas. Politically, voluntary land abandonment created opportunities and facilitated the seizure of agricultural lands by forest authorities. Economically, it increased the costs of production of remaining maize farmers in zones where abandonment was important. This illustrates how agricultural retreat in Thailand must be seen as the result of distinct, but at times interacting, sets of processes.