Agriculture was able to expand during the 1960s and 1970s as it had access to new land and unemployed labour.[2] Between 1962 and 1983, the agricultural sector grew by 4.1% a year on average and in 1980 it employed over 70% of the working population.[2] Yet, the state perceived developments in the agricultural sector as necessary for industrialisation and exports were taxed in order to keep domestic prices low and raise revenue for state investment in other areas of the economy.[2]
As other sectors developed, labourers went in search of work in other sectors of the economy and agriculture was forced to become less labour-intensive and more industrialised.[2] Facilitated by state laws forcing banks to provide cheap credit to the agricultural sector and by providing its own credit through the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).[2] The state further invested in education, irrigation, and rural roads.[2] The result was that agriculture continued to grow at 2.2% between 1983 and 2007, but also that agriculture now only provides half of rural jobs as farmers took advantage of the investment to diversify.[2]
As agriculture declined in relative financial importance in terms of income with rising industrialization and Westernisation of Thailand from the 1960s, but it continued to provide the benefits of employment and self-sufficiency, rural social support, and cultural custody. Technical and economic globalisation forces have continued to change agriculture to a food industry and thereby exposed smallholder farmers to such an extent the traditional environmental and human values have declined markedly in all but the poorer areas.
Herding water buffalo in Chaiyaphum Province.
Agribusiness, both privately and government-owned, expanded from the 1960s and subsistence farmers were partly viewed as a past relic which agribusiness could modernise. However, intensive integrated production systems of subsistence farming continued to offer efficiencies that were not financial, including social benefits which have now caused agriculture to be treated as both a social and financial sector in planning, with increased recognition of environmental and cultural values. "Professional farmers" made up 19.5% of all farmers in 2004.[2]