Stop betting the farm on Thai rice

Published: 2 Aug 2012 at 00.00
Newspaper section: News

Last year's floods cost Thailand more than 1 trillion baht thanks to a perfect storm of years of insufficient infrastructure investment, poor crisis management, haphazard zoning and unusually heavy seasonal rains.

A worker shovels rice at a mill. The government’s rice pledging scheme threatens to be the most costly on record and it is pricing Thai rice out of the global market.

It's a political miracle of sorts that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has survived. She might not be so fortunate in reckoning with the next flood, namely the government's bet-the-farm strategy to buy out the country's entire rice harvest in an ill-conceived bid to corner the world rice market.

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Renaissance
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Discussion 3 : 02 Aug 2012 at 14.273
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Thai bio-technology has been helping Vietnam to increase the quantity and quality of its rice for a decade now with welcome arms from the Vietnamese government. Thais are even invited to hold workshops for farmers. In contrast, the Thai Ministry of Agriculture continues to prefer old-fashioned chemical fertilizers and chemical sprays. Thailand can therefore only continue to fall behind Vietnam. Perhaps the Deputy Minister of Agriculture would like to show an interest in this matter, if he has time.
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hawaiiman
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Discussion 2 : 02 Aug 2012 at 09.222
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Despite it's thoroughly discussed shortcomings, the rice scheme does amount to economic stimulus. I live in one of the poorest provinces, and this year there are noticeable changes. New tractors are everywhere, schools are getting painted and repaired, roads are getting re-paved. I can't trace all this to the rice scheme, but something is happening, and out here it looks very positive.
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pjt
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Discussion 1 : 02 Aug 2012 at 08.281
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All good stuff but hard to see what the Thai people can do to influence this because the full cost and consequences of this decision will never be revealed or not be connected to the problem. For example when we need to recapitalise the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Co-operatives at some point in the future will people make the connection and see it as part of the cost of this scheme. The best hope is probably for media and opposition to continue to push for transparency and disclosure in this scheme, together with explaining in more depth why it creates the wrong incentives and actions and what the alternative paths could be
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Stop betting the farm on Thai rice | Bangkok Post: opinion