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This paper evaluates the bases for the competitiveness of rice growing in Thailand. The analysis shows that rice farmers' ability to face the competition in international markets is largely a function of the resources (land, water, credit) available to them, for which economic policy has brought significant means and had considerable effect. Public intervention at macro-economic level as well as at the sector scale strongly influenced the profitability of rice growing, movements of capital and labour towards or away from rice farming, and the rate at which farmers adopted new techniques. In particular, the unequal geographic dissemination of State investments led to a heterogeneous distribution of public goods such as the hydraulic infrastructure, road and railway network density and financial services. The existence and the quality of these public goods strongly influenced the range of choices for the combination of factors of production which have, in turn, acted upon the competitiveness of Thai rice growing.