Thailand’s agriculture growth is predicted to increase by 2-3 per cent this year.
In the first quarter of this year the sector recorded growth of 5.5 per cent thanks to good weather and sufficient rainfall.
Average selling prices of agricultural pro-ducts have also held at reasonable levels, encouraging farmers to tighten up on their production processes and employ more casual workers to tend the fields and help produce more off-season rice, sugar cane and maize.
Plantations showed an uplift of 7.9 per cent over the previous year through growing out-of-season rice, sugarcane, pineapple, rubber, oil palm, longan, durian, mangosteen and rambutan.
In contrast, the production of rice, maize and cassava declined.
Forestry was up 0.7 per cent due to the demand for eucalyptus for the production of paper, especially in Japan and China. Demand for charcoal also increased.
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