Rice is central to Thailand with a little under half its farmland is marked for rice cultivation.
These pressures on the sector, reported in detail for the first time by Reuters, are squeezing debt-laden Thai farmers despite tens of billions of dollars in subsidies over the past decade. “The cultivated area is down because of lack of rainfall and irrigated water,” said Somporn, a senior fellow at the state-affiliated Knowledge Network Institute of Thailand .
“But the government didn’t do enough … to improve productivity,” he said. Though prices are now high, “farmers cannot take the opportunity to produce rice,” Somporn said, adding that he expected output to drop around 30% over the next two growing seasons due to the water shortage.On a sweltering August morning, dozens of farmers and land owners protested outside a state-run agricultural bank in Chai Nat, where they had waited overnight to meet officials.
Even before the new government took office, Sripai and other farmers from the region made repeated trips to the capital, Bangkok, to lobby the agriculture ministry. Decades of investment in research and infrastructure allowed farmers to switch to high-yielding varieties beginning in the 1960s, cementing Thailand’s then-position as the world’s largest rice exporter, said KNIT’s Somporn.
Source: Loan Digest (loandigest.net)
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