Investigation of the agricultural sectors of the member states of Southeast Asian Countries Union (ASEAN) by multi-criteria decision making methods

The aim of this research is to demonstrate the performance of agricultural sectors in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries using selected criteria, to identify the deficiencies in agricultural policies, to explore competitive advantages and to guide food and nutrition policies. The analyses of this research use the secondary of time series data between year 1967 - 2016 from 10 countries including; Bruney Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam which are members of ASEAN. This research uses the Multiple Criteria Desicion Making methods and the data used for the mentioned countries include the following criteria; (1) Total agricultural production value of the land, (2) Self-sufficiency of animal products criteria, (3) Self-sufficiency of crop products criteria, (4) Rural population rate, (5) Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, and (6) Value of foreign trade in agricultural products. As a result, when the results of the TOPSIS and ELECTRE method were compared, the results were quite similar. Analysis of these two approaches showed that Thailand was the most successful in agricultural sectors performance in 1967 at the beginning of the establishment of ASEAN countries. Meanwhile, in 1990 Thailand was deferred to second place and replaced with Malaysia ranked first. In the period from 2000 to 2016, Thailand was in second place and Malaysia was the most successful in the field of agricultural sectors performance.