Increasing rice prices attracted Thai peasants to specialise in this export crop,and this acted to further erode the phrai system.Extensive canal construction aimed to open up new areas for rice cultivation and tis transportation to markets.Land grants to royal family members and nobles accompanied some canal project.and later in the century land concessions were granted to private companies.such as the extensive Rangsit project,north of Bangkok. From the 1890s, in fact,canal building was driven by private interests,and not the state,such was the intimate connection between rice-growing,transport and land values.