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In China, nearly 20 million migrant workers are expected to return to their villages and small towns this quarter. They will be joining the ranks of 750 million Chinese who live in the countryside and look for casual work. If Beijing can push out large infrastructure projects fast enough, they will hope to get employment again. The global economic shock is also deeply felt in China, which has emerged as the world's production house. But since global demand is not there, factories and companies have started to downsize, leaving the migrant workers jobless.

In India, the situation is fairly similar. About 300 million casual labourers are also moving back home, where they will be living on the fringes of the natural economy. As construction jobs disappear and thousands of small-scale factories shut down daily throughout the country, the casual workforce is being driven right back.

The hard reality there is the scarcity of resources in the countryside. Money plays a limited role. Barter of goods and services is more commonplace. Credit available is from the local loan sharks.

We have yet to witness this wave of migration back to the countryside by Thai workers. But soon we'll see it. At this moment, unemployment in Thailand is rising at a rate of about 100,000 workers a month. The economic impact started to hit Thailand in the last quarter of last year. If the rate goes unchecked, unemployment will easily climb to 1.5 million by the end of the year.

The Abhisit government has come up with all kinds of financial assistance to help stimulate consumption. Then it will follow up with investment projects or infrastructure investment to prop up the economy and cushion unemployment. This is the top priority of the government amid the possibility that economic growth might turn negative this year.

Yet there is no clear policy from the Abhisit government on how it will deal with labourers from Isaan and the northern provinces of Thailand. If there is no appropriate policy to address unemployment of the labourers from the Northeast and North, it can develop into political chaos as these areas represent the stronghold of the "red shirt" anti-government protesters.

The government will need a bottoms-up approach for these workers, who have been providing relatively cheap labour for the Central region. Infrastructure investment won't come out in time to stem the unemployment problems. Any programme introduced must match what the labourers from Isaan and the North to do now rather than later. They have the capacity to grow rice and plant economic crops so that Thailand may resume its rightful glory as the food bowl of Southeast Asia.

There is now a market lapse in growing rice and a good price in the market and many countries, such as the Philippines, need to import the staple. Vietnam is doing well in this regard but is technically bankrupt and will not be able to export as much as Thailand can if fully mobilised.

So we have it that there are two directions to be taken and many not to be taken. The directions are economic investment in infrastructure and more importantly, an extensive publicly funded programme to get farmers to plant every square metre of ground in the north of the country before the rainy season is upon us. This programme needs to be in the policy formulation stage now.

Past governments have conducted a nationwide survey on the available plantation areas. This has to be followed up. All the available land for planting must be fully exploited. The government must design a programme for labourers to work on state-owned land to plant rice or other commercial crops, particularly fuel crops, to reduce Thailand's dependence on oil imports. It can also lease land from the private sector for the unemployed to work in farming.

If this approach is prepared and implemented effectively and promptly, Thailand will have no problem in absorbing four million redundant labourers in the worst-case scenario. The investment in this farming programme is not much and can yield worthy results.

As the world market is in turmoil, there will continue to be strong demand for Thai rice in the international market. A price slump for Thai rice is not likely to happen, as financially-strapped nations will curb their imports of other goods but will continue to buy Thai rice. Growing valuable crops such as palm products will help reduce our dependence on imported oil.

Most importantly, this crisis will provide opportunities for Thailand to go back to develop its agriculture by moving away from chemicals to rely on organic fertilisers instead. If we can develop our agriculture to be chemical-free and high quality, the value of our agricultural produce will increase in the world market. This is the fastest and most effective way to deal with the economic downturn as Thailand prepares for the worst-case scenario.