Food shipments are forecast to grow by 6% this year to 1.03 trillion baht, but the stronger currency remains a key area of concern that could curb export growth.
A joint report by the National Food Institute (NFI), the Federation of Thai Industries and the Thai Chamber of Commerce said Thailand's food exports grew by 0.8% in 2012 to 972 billion baht as purchasing power from the US and EU was sapped by weak economies.
The top five food export products were rice, sugar, shrimp, canned tuna and poultry.
NFI president Petch Chinabutr said Thai food exports will likely recover and see growth of 6% due mainly to a recovering world economy.
But he warned that food export growth could drop to 3.9% if the baht rises to 28.50 to the US dollar. Products that would be hit hard by the baht appreciation include tapioca, vegetables and fruits, said Mr Petch.
Even so, the NFI expects tapioca to remain one of the more promising export items. Others include poultry, pet food and canned tuna.
The group is also urging the state to help strengthen the competitiveness of Thai food exports and work out measures to ease the impact of higher wages on manufacturers.
Help is being sought to cut production costs and expand into markets such as China, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Pornsil Patcharintanakul, chairman of the Board of Trade's food and agribusiness committee, said frozen food makers are especially concerned about hours-long power outages in April with the expected disruption of natural gas from Myanmar.
The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand has warned of blackouts on weekday afternoons from April 4-12 during scheduled maintenance of the Yadana block in the Gulf of Martaban.
The work could affect as much as 6,000 megawatts of power in Thailand or 23% of last year's peak demand of 26,121 MW.