What does Thailand produce and export?

The southern peninsula has no real dry season, which is what rubber trees need to be tapped through most of the year. Estates were planted from the early twentieth century, but the industry became a smallholder one: several million growers with a few hectares each, replanting subsidized by a levy on exports, selling latex and sheet to local dealers who bulk it into standard grades. Thailand produced 32% of the world's natural rubber in 2024 (FAOSTAT) and held 30% of world natural-rubber export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), the largest share of any country, most of it heading to tire plants in China, Japan and the United States.

Rice comes from the flat, flood-fed central plain and the northeast. Canal building under royal direction from the late nineteenth century turned the Chao Phraya delta into an export granary, and Thai millers later built a reputation for long-grain quality and, in the fragrant jasmine varieties of the northeast, for a premium cultivar that cannot be grown identically elsewhere. Thailand grew 4.1% of the world's rice in 2024 (FAOSTAT) but took 17% of world rice export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Policy has swung the trade sharply: a pledging scheme that bought rice from farmers well above the market price between 2011 and 2014 accumulated stockpiles so large that releasing them depressed world prices for years afterward.

Cane and palm fill the rest of the export list. Sugar mills in the northeastern provinces work under a quota system that divides output between the domestic market and export, restructured after 2018 when the pricing arrangements were challenged at the World Trade Organization; Thailand produced 5.5% of world sugar in 2023 (FAOSTAT) and held 5.8% of world sugar export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Oil palm in the southern provinces gave 4.2% of world palm oil production in 2023 (FAOSTAT), nearly all of it consumed at home or blended into biodiesel rather than exported. Feed for a large poultry and shrimp industry explains why the country bought 2.2% of world soybean import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI).