Estimation of Agricultural Productivity and Its Application to Modeling the Expansion of Agricultural Land in Thailand

Abstract

Land use/cover in Thailand has undergone dramatic modifications in the last century. Cultivated land area has shown an astounding increase by a factor of almost ten, a net increase in area of about 16.4 million hectares, during the period 1880-1980 and has since risen by 10% until 1990.The modeling of the changes in the agricultural land use consists of climate-based agricultural productivity estimation and income estimation. The central concept in the estimation of the productivity is the growing period and the photosynthetic efficiency of the crops. Modeling is based on the idea of land-unit, with each grid representing one unit. A grid-specific yield index is calculated and is further modified based on the grid-specific soil conditions.