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In many Asian countries, agricultural industrialization led by agro-industries has been progressing, and agricultural production has been shifting from staple foods to high value commodities such as vegetables, fruits and livestock products. This trend is considered to have contributed to improving agricultural profitability as well as to expanding rural employment. The purpose of the paper is to test the hypothesis that the foreign direct investment (FDI) promotes high value agriculture through development of the food processing industry. We estimated factors that determine labor productivity in the food processing industry and agricultural sector, and obtained cross country statistical results that provide supports to the hypothesis. The typical case of this FDI-food industry-farm linkage is seen in contract farming, in which firms provide technical assistances and guaranteed markets to farmers. The results of a farm household survey implemented in China by the authors provide the farm level evidence to the linkage, in which foreign affiliated enterprises play important roles in technology transfer in compliance with food safety standards.

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This research develops a hybrid input-output model to quantify the economy-wide impact of capture fisheries on the economy. The method regards capture fisheries to be the "carrier branches" producing "core inputs", which can drive the other fisheries sectors in the Ghosh supply-driven model. These fisheries sectors are all linked with the rest of the economy and can affect it through backward linkages in the Leontief demand-driven model. The empirical findings based on the Thai fisheries corroborate findings in other literature and further reveal that capture fisheries make a much greater contribution to the economy than is usually thought.