Agricultural Information Technology in Asia and Oceania 1998
© 1998 by The Asian Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture
Application of Information Technology in Agriculture in
Thailand
Apichart Pongsrihadulchai
Office of Agricultural Economics, Ministry of Agriculture & Cooperatives, Thailand
1. Importance of Agricultural Sector
Thailand is a tropical country situated in Southeast
Asia with a total area of 514,000 square kilometers or
about 51 million hectares, of which about 40 percent are
agricultural land. The total population in 1996 was about
60 million. The agricultural sector, although declining in
relative term, is still playing a significant role in the
national economy. Since most of other developments are
based on agriculture and majority of the people are still
living on farms or depend on the agricultural activities
for their livelihood. However, the agricultural
development in Thailand in the past has been achieved
largely at the expense of the country’s rich natural
resources. Consequently, the country is now confronting
problems of natural resources and environmental
degradation. The forest area had decreased from 19.8
million hectares in 1976 to 13.4 million hectares in 1993
or average loss about 0.4 million hectares per year.
During the 20 year-period between 1976 to 1996,
gross domestic products (GDP) for agricultural sector
had increased quadruple from 92,460 million baht to
368,720 million baht but its contribution to national
economy had decreased from 27 percent to 9 percent.
Similarly, the agricultural population had also increased
from 29.67 million to 36.98 million while its proportion
had decreased from about 70 percent to about 61 percent.
For export, the agricultural exports had increased almost
ten times from 45,707 million baht to 414,730 million
baht but its share had fallen from 76 percent to 29
percent. It is also interesting to note that many
agricultural products exported from Thailand were either
ranked first or on the top ten of agricultural trade in the
world market. These included rice, natural rubber,
tapioca products, sugar, canned pineapple, frozen
shrimps and frozen chickens. Thus it is not exaggerated
to say that even though Thailand is a small country it is
one of the few countries in the world that able to produce
food enough to help feed the world. The agricultural
sector in Thailand is therefore not only importance to the
country itself but also to the whole world as well. Despite
of its importance, most farmers are still very poor as
compared with other occupations. Presently, the GDP
per capita for non-agricultural sector is higher than
agricultural sector more than ten times. The average
annual cash income of agricultural household in crop
year 1995/96 was about 81,000 baht, of which 60 percent
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came from off-farm or non-agricultural activities.
However, the net saving was only about 24,000 baht per
household.
2. Agricultural Statistical System
The agricultural statistical system in Thailand is a
decentralzed system. The two major agencies involved in
agricultural statistics in Thailand are as follows:
2.1 The National Statistical Office (NSO)
It is one of the government agencies with a
departmental status under the Office of the Prime
Minister. The NSO is responsible for conducting all
censuses relating to population, industry, agriculture etc.,
as well as large-scale statistical surveys, such as labbor
force survey, socio-economic survey and intercensal
survey of agriculture.
2.2 Office of Agricultural Economics (OAE)
It is a department under Ministry of Agriculture and
Cooperatives (MOAC), which is the prime agency
responsible for collection, compilation, and
dissemination of all current agricultural statistics. Other
major functions of the OAE are to conduct agricultural
economic researches, formulate and recommend
appropriate agricultural
policies and initiate development plan as well as monitor
and evaluate certain projects of the Ministry.
3. Application of Information Technology in
Agriculture
There is no doubt about the importance of
information especially during the “Information Age” as
it is called today. The role of information technology
becomes more and more influence to ways of life for all
people including farmers due to its fast development.
Those who access to more information generally will
have more advantages than those who has limited
information. The information technology has been
widely used in Thailand for many years mainly in
business sector. For agricultural sector, it is still mostly
limited to the government agencies and the main
objectives are for data processing or establishment of
database. In recent years, however, the geographic
information technology (GIS) together with remote
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sening technology became a popular tool among
agencies within the MOAC for planning development
project. In this section two important examples of the
application of IT in agriculture are disscused. The first
example is the application of GIS for agricultural zoning
while the second one is the use of internet technology for
dissemination of information.
3.1 Application of GIS for Determination of Crop
Suitability Zone
This project is under taken by the OAE, MOAC with
the objective to dilineate the suitability areas for each
important crop in each watershed. The procedures can be
summarized as follows:
3.1.1 Collection of thematic maps of scale 1:250,000 and
enter into the GIS. These include basin map, soil series
map, rainfall map, irrigation map, legal forest boundary
map, present landuse map (obtained from interpretation
of Landat-5 images), road network map, and
administrative boundary map.
3.1.2 Conversion of these analog maps to digital maps.
3.1.3 Overlaying of digital maps to determine the
suitability area for each crop follows:
Grouping of soil series according to soil characteristics
into 4 levels as highly suitable, moderatly suitable,
marginally suitable and unsuitable.
1) Classifying of areas according to quantity of
rainfall and availability of irrigation system into 4
classes as similar to (1). The irrigated area is
always considered as highly suitable area.
2) Overlaying the maps from (1) and (2) and
obtaining the suitability map. For each crop 4
levels of suitability are determined as (1).
3) Overlaying the maps from (3) onto legal forest
boundary map and present landuse map and then
classifying the area using the following criteria:
- Existing forest area will be classified as non-
agricultural area.
- Conservation forest area will be classified as
non-agricultural area regardless of the existing
condition.
- Economic forest area will be classified as
agricultural area if there is no more existing
forest and the land is suitable for agriculture
(highly and moderately suitable).
3.1.4 As results, for each crop, 4 major zones are
determined.
1) Agricultural Zone
For this zone it is further classified as highly
suitable, moderately suitable, marginelly suitable
and unsuitable areas.
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2) Economic Forest Zone
This zone is further divided as
- Existing forest area
- Encroachment area which will be classified as
agricultural area if this area is either highly
suitable or moderately suitable area for some
crops, otherwise it is recommended to be a
reforestation area.
3) Conservation Forest Zone
This zone include existing forest area and area
for rehabilitation.
4) Other Zone
3.1.5 The final recomendation of particular crop suitable
for each area will base on the economic information such
as farm price, yield per unit area, cost of production,
transportation cost, and market demand etc.
At present the suitability maps for rice, corn, cassava,
soybean, sugarcane, rubber, tree crop and pasture has
already finished for all 25 watershed areas. However, the
estimated area for each category is not yet available.
3.2 Internet for Farmers
This is a pilot project initiated and supported by the
OAE, MOAC and is carried out by the Institute of
Technology for Rural Development, Chulalongkorn
University. The pupose of the project is to study the
feasibility of using internet technology as a two-way
communication tool for tranfering of production
technology and economic information from government
agencies to farmers as well as a channel for recieving
messages from farmers. It is also designed in such way
that farmers can also communicate among themselves. It
was started in 1996 in 5 provinces near Bangkok and
about 60 local organizations were participated, of which
about half were Tambon (Sub-District) Administration
Organizations (TAO) while the other half were
agricultural cooperatives.
For the first experimental phase, only one central
host at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok is
established and all users must make a long distance call
through the special telephone numbers provided by the
project. The service is limited to the off-line Bulletine
Board System (BBS) mode only without any on-line
search or web browsing. This phase will concentrate on
how to manage and organize the two-way
communication within the community effectively by
exploring the appropriate way to communicate between
the local organization and farmers in the community. At
the Ministry offices in Bangkok the experts in various
fields in different departments are requested to join the
BBS by responding to the relevants questions and
providing the information needed by farmers.
The participated local organizations must already
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have their own computer and telephone line. The project officials at various levels of administration.
provides only the modem and the required client Unfortunately, this project could not started due to the
software. All technical issues are also supported present economic crisis in the country.
including on site hardware and software installation,
technical training for the users and solving any problem
during operation. The project also support the cost of
long distance call with the maximum time limit to 10
minutes per call. The agricultural experts in Bangkok
who help supporting information can use local call to the
central host with separate lines or via internet. A local
villager in each experimental area is recruited to work as
an informant for conveying messages from local office
(cooperatives or TAO) which obtained information from
Bangkok to farmers in his village and also conveys the
messages from farmers back to the local office for further
transmission to Bangkok via BBS for corresponding.
Farmers are also able to exchange their views and
experiences through this system.
The next phase will be the installations of provincial
hosts and the improvement of information dissemination
system. The establishment of local hosts will cut the long
distance telephone cost and allow the number of users to
conveniently expand. It is planned, however, that after
termination of the pilot project all of the communication
cost and facilities will be the responsibility of the local
organizations.
After implementation for about a year it was found
that there were still many obstacles and difficulties
remained to be solved. The main problem was that the
local organizations were not actively participated
especially in further dissemination of the information to
the farmers which is the ultimate target groups of this
project. This is because they do not yet convince about
the benefit of having the BBS.

4. Future Plan

The development strategy as stated in the 8 th

National and Social Development Plan (1997-2001) is to
use people as focal point of development. In this
connection, the MOAC has proposed “The
Strengthening Capability in Management of the Farmers
Project” to be implemented during this plan. In order to
implement this project effectively and efficiently, the
feasibility study for finding the appropriate curriculums
and approach is needed. The available information
technologies such as teleconference, direct to home
satellite, and internet will be investigated for using as a
mean for tranfering of technology and relevant
information to farmers. It is expected that the use of IT
for this purpose in the long run will save the government
budget and personel. More importantly, there will be no
information gap between the original sources and the
end users of the information as compared with the
conventional procedure which the information were
conveyed to farmers in many steps via goverment

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