Strawberry Cultivation in Northern Thailand: Expansion of the Domestic Market and Transformation of Socio-Economic Relationships in the Production Area

抄録

This paper investigates the history of spreading strawberry cultivation in the context of Thai society, focusing on changing production patterns, not only over the course of local history but also through markets, crop distribution and interethnic relationships. Firstly, I describe the change that has taken place from the production of strawberries for export and processing to the production of fresh strawberries for domestic market, with increased amounts of production. Secondly, I focus on the strawberry festival and the promotion by the Royal Project as factors that created and enhanced the demand for fresh strawberries within the Thai domestic market. Furthermore, exploring that some of Shan immigrant workers became self-employed as contract farmers with Karen working as their intermediary, this paper shows new interethnic relations have been formed as a result of strawberry cultivation. Then I conclude that in Thailand’s region of the largest strawberry production has developed in tandem with changes in Thailand, such as changing demand in the domestic markets and increasing migrant workers.