Title

The Future of Rice Farming in Southeast Asia

Speaker

Jefferson Fox (Senior Fellow, East-West Center) 

Abstract

Conventional theories of agrarian transition predict that modernization pushes smallholders out of farming and consolidates land into larger, mechanized holdings. In mainland Southeast Asia, however, farm sizes have declined even as rice output has more than doubled. Based on structured surveys of over 1,400 farm households across six rice basins in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, this study examines changes in rice farming between 2000 and 2019. While landownership remains high, mechanization, input intensification, and indebtedness have transformed rural livelihoods. Machine broadcasting dominates the Chao Phraya Basin and Mekong Delta, while transplanting persists in Laos and northern Vietnam. Chemical fertilizer and pesticide use are nearly universal, but organic practices are rare. Across sites, debt has risen sharply, especially where mechanization is most advanced. These findings reveal a process of deagrarianizing intensification—rising output with declining labor, feminization, and growing dependence on credit and external inputs. Sustaining rice-based livelihoods amid demographic aging, ecological degradation, and market volatility will require renewed emphasis on sustainable inputs, cooperative institutions, and policies prioritizing rural welfare over simple yield maximization.

Bio

Jefferson Fox is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. His research focuses on land-use and land-cover change in Asia and how these transformations affect regional livelihoods and the global environment. He has led and collaborated on studies examining agrarian transitions and rice cultivation, the expansion of rubber plantations, peri-urbanization in Vietnam, community forestry and carbon sequestration, and the ethics of spatial information technologies. Dr. Fox has worked on watershed management projects in Nepal and taught geography at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and serves as an affiliate graduate faculty member in Geography and in the Natural Resources and Environmental Management program at the University of Hawai‘i.

Chair

YANAGISAWA, Masayuki (CSEAS)

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共催: 東南アジアの自然と農業研究会