This strategy was pursued by countries as diverse as Taiwan and Malaysia in the 1960s, and Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s. On the one hand, the arguments in favor of agricultural diversification and agrofood based rural industrialization seem even more pressing than for the lower-middle income countries of Southeast Asia. The predominantly agrarian structure of these economies makes the need to increase income in rural areas more urgent, given the extreme difficulties that the urban and industrial sector will face to absorb a growing rural labor force in the medium term. An alternative view would stress the need for rice intensification in the IMR where the potential for rice is still high, poverty and food insecurity are pervasive in rural areas, and world rice markets are more dynamic than in the previous two decades. Download full-text discussion paper .
Proper citation is required.