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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

follows an analysis of socio-economic classes and household groups distinguished
by ownership and use of land and an estimate of the distribution of land area
and value between these household groups. The final section concludes.

1. Land use, registration and wealth: the historical background

The story of population growth, economic development and expansion
of human settlement is everywhere a long one with roots going back to the
distant past. The drivers of development in Thailand have been unification of
the country as a national state over the past two centuries and, since the 1950s,
investment in ports, roads, irrigation systems, power supply, utilities, services
and public administration supporting market-driven development of production
and trade for domestic consumption and export reaching into the most remote
areas of the country.
2

Expansion of rural settlements and agricultural land use

The total population of Thailand increased from 8 million at the turn of
the 20th century to 12 million in the early 1930s and 26 million at the start of the
first economic development plan (1960), doubling again to nearly 57 million by
1990 and finally stabilising at just under 70 million today. Up to the 1980s the
area of land occupied or in cultivation increased more or less pari passu with
population. As shown in the changing land use in Figure 1, between 1957 and the
1980s a large amount of forest land was converted to rice and other agriculture.
Growth of existing villages and towns was accompanied by formation of new
villages, the choice of location and mode of habitation and use depending on
traditions and technology of each community. Some groups migrated long
distances. Most found new land near to the places from which they came.

2 Nation-building had many country-specific and contextual features including foreign policy
and security concerns emphasised by Tomas Larsson in Land and Loyalty, Cornell University Press
(2012) as well as responses to social and political pressures arising from transformation of the
economy and ways of life.

88 The Value of Land in Thailand Today

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