Nevertheless, the agricultural growth rate in Thailand has performed well compared
to other lower middle income countries. However, this has been made possible by expanding
cultivated areas at the expense of national forest land. This issue will be discussed at length
later. Thailand did not participate in the Green Revolution by adopting high-yield rice
varieties such as IR.-8 (Setboonsarng and Evenson, 1991). Moreover, Thailand has typically expanded cultivated areas as a source of agricultural growth stemming from the resource
endowment of the nation, abundant land itself which permitted the Thai farmer to expand
land frontiers instead of improving productivity. Land productivity (yield per rai; one rai =
0.16 hectares or 0.4 acres) has been very low and stable, while labour productivity (output per
farmer) has increased significantly (see James, et al., 1987; Timmer, 1991; Watanabe, 1992).
The resource rich case, land abundance, can smoothly tolerate the slow maturation of land
productivity because its primary sector (rice sector) is able to generate adequate rents and as a
result, the greater part of economic rents is extracted from clearing fertile forest land. (See
table 11)