Thai rice booms for all but the growers

[Admin]

Thai rice booms for all but the growers
By The Nation
2011-03-14

If farmers remain poor while others flourish, then something's amiss

Thailand may be proud of being the world's largest rice exporter again this year with an estimated 9-9.5 million tonnes of rice to be shipped overseas. But few rice growers in the kingdom are sharing in that national glow of goodwill, judging by their plight.

Last month a group of Thai farmers representing families in 22 provinces in the Central Plains closed a highway in Ayutthaya in a protest to express their anger at falling rice prices. Blocking highways has always been their favourite protest method when their demands are not met by the government.

Thai farmers are angry because they are poor and landless. They have to rent farmland at a high cost to grow rice that relies on costly fertiliser. Subject to rice price control, their produce emerges from the field cheaper than the production cost. That's when trouble comes.

On the whole, prices of paddy took a tumble this year, according to the Commerce Ministry, to Bt8,500 a tonne from Bt9,400 in early February. The farmers protesting in Ayutthaya demanded Bt14,000 per tonne to cover high overheads, but the government believed even Bt9,000 per tonne was too high. Meanwhile, fragrant paddy dropped from Bt14,800 to between Bt12,000 and Bt13,000 a tonne.

The fall reflected large stockpiles in the country held by companies after some rice exporters could not sell rice they had purchased from the government, because Vietnamese rice was priced lower.

The National Rice Policy Committee this week is considering a request by farmers for a higher benchmark price for rice under the insurance programme in the 2010-11 crop year, to reflect rising costs.

Bearing the brunt of the slump, farmers demanded the government increase compensation to them as well as enlarge the quota of compensation to each household.

As for bagged rice, the Commerce Ministry has no plans for a price hike, saying production costs have yet to increase.

The average price of a five-kilogram bag of rice is between Bt100 and Bt130, with jasmine rice prices of between Bt160 and Bt200 for the same weight bag. But there's been global demand of late and remarkable growth in rice exports over the past two months.

However, the protesting farmers complained that the higher production costs for fertiliser, rental fees, transport and other expenses had lowered their income and profit.

What we see are flourishing rice millers and bagged rice sellers. We have never seen rice millers or CEOs of leading bagged rice producers take to the streets to protest low rice prices.

Farmers' demands for state assistance tend to fall on deaf ears. It's puzzling why demands such as salary hikes for lawmakers and executives of local administrative organisations tend to receive more positive responses.

The point is why our hard-working farmers, themselves the backbone of our country, remain the poor, landless, powerless underdogs? Their image is in stark contrast to that of well-off rice millers and bagged rice producers. You will never hear terms like 'poor' rice millers, or 'poor' bagged rice producers in this country, even when there is a drop in rice prices.

Farmers have been poor and mistreated for too long. They may have themselves partly to blame in that their managerial skills and know-how are limited. There's also little new technology introduced in our rice farming sector. Our investment in research and development for the sector is far lower than in some of our competing rice-growing neighbours.

Water resources and logistics have often been mismanaged. Large parts of our rice fields were flooded in the last rainy season. They still use trucks to carry the produce. These problems tend to repeat themselves annually. All this culminates in farmers closing roads, or dumping paddy at Government House.

Let's face it. If farmers are poor, and yet others continue to flourish, then there's something amiss in our rice sector.

[isanbirder]

You have to distinguish between farmers in, say, Suphanburi, where they get three crops a year, and those in Buriram and Surin, many of whom can get only one crop.  The solution is widespread irrigation (but we're already short of water), and economy of scale (but can anyone see that happening?).  Meanwhile the cost of the land is rising... a thread on TV suggests that land with a chanote cannot be bought for less than 60,000 a rai, more probably 80,000.