Rural transformation and land use change in northern Thailand

Abstract

Northern Thailand is undergoing rapid changes in rural areas where new opportunities linked to national and international market demand have arisen for farmers, both on-farm through cash crop demands and off-farm through industrialisation. Using socio-economic data and multilevel regression, we show how modernisation of farming systems and commercialisation of crop production reach villages to various degrees. Most changes in the rural sector are directed towards cash cropping and accentuate socio-economic disparities between households. Most land use changes are linked to social networks but different changes imply different degrees of involvement in agriculture. An analysis of land cover changes identifies the landscape determinants of the location of land use changes.