Until the end of the fifties, the techniques of wet rice cultivation in Southeast Asia remained relatively autonomous, owing little to industrial technology. With the green revolution has been accelerated the submission of rice agriculture and of rice producers to industrial interests, particularly through the use of chemical fertilizers. During nearly twenty years, the bulk of these fertilizers used by Malaysian and Indonesian rice peasants has been imported from industrial countries. Following sharp price increases in the middle of the seventies, local fertilizer production was raised significantly, in Indonesia to the extent of assuring actual self-sufficiency. The examination of the conditions of this evolution allows the identification of a set of successive stages. 1) Along with the decline of intra regional trade, the commercial dependency at the hands of the fertilizer producing industrial countries increases. 2) The increasingly expensive needs thus created must then be met by local production. 3) Highly capital-intensive, such an industry cannot be established without massive external aid: thus is Consolidated financial and technological dependency. 4) The ultimate and final stage is reached: the unequal exchange, now occurring directly between local foreign-controlled industry and the padi fields, insures more solidly the capture of peasant labour.