Government aims to increase farm prices by 30% this year

AGRICULTURE

The government has undertaken to raise prices of key agricultural products this year by 30%, or about 64 billion baht.

The Commerce Ministry is to intervene with urgent measures including extended agricultural product-pledging programmes, additional funding schemes, product development and market distribution centres and agricultural database systems, Commerce Minister Pornthiva Nakasai said yesterday.

Mrs Pornthiva yesterday chaired a workshop on agricultural product management strategy, in which over 200 representatives from the private sector participated.

The target products cover rice, tapioca, coffee, corn, oil palm, soybean, pork and poultry. They exclude rubber and sugarcane, which will be separately handled by the Agriculture Ministry and Industry Ministry respectively.

Agricultural products have an estimated value of about 1.2 trillion baht this year - with rice representing 260 billion baht, rubber and products 254 billion, food crops 234 billion, livestock 180 billion, fishery products 170.6 billion, energy crops 50 billion, fibre crops 1.4 billion baht and other products 50 billion.

As part of the agricultural stimulus plan, the government plans to allocate an additional 44.78 billion baht to fund the agricultural product-pledging scheme on top of the 110-billion-baht budget approved by the previous government.

Of the additional budget, 43.69 billion baht would go to raising the prices of rice, tapioca, maize, oil palm and poultry. About 1.085 billion baht would be slated for setting up product development centres, promoting intra-provincial match-making and increasing distribution outlets, especially in tourism areas.

For its rice strategy, the ministry said the government sees no urgent need to accelerate selling rice. To stabilise prices it plans to forge closer partnership with the world's major rice-producing nations such as Vietnam, China and India.

Plans are also afoot to encourage trading of rice and other key farm products through futures exchange mechanisms.

According to Mrs Pornthiva, the government will also aim to convince farmers to upgrade their produce to meet varying demands of individual markets and to produce more organic products.

In the longer term, contract farming will be extended as part of plans to stabilise crop prices.

In marketing, the government will seek partnerships in advanced sectors to achieve wider space for local agricultural products, she said.