jayjayjayjay

and tour business acumen lies where?

You are not going to lower production costs overnight without a total re-haul of the entire rice farming 'business'.

And producing more of something, at a loss, is not any way to run a business.

In the short-term I might argue that it would be better to produce less, and offer incentives to growers to either not grow rice, for a season or two. Longer term, increased productivity will lead to fewer jobs, so you're going to need to create some sort of social safety net for those displaced.

now they need to start smart thinking

So Thai farmers need to start thinking smart? This is an incredibly simplistic view, perhaps even more simplistic than herr General might spout off.

Most of the costs (seed, fertilizer, water, harvest, milling, storage, transport) are fixed per rai, there aren't a lot of variables save labor.

Its not simplistic at all, and no the costs are not fixed. The variety of rice, how much fertiliser, water, and herbicides are all variables. The regional differences also contribute as some varieties grow better than others in some provinces. It makes sense for those who can to grow more jasmine rice, as its not grown at a loss. But for me the big change has to be in marketing. The system has way too many middlemen, which eventually filters back to the production costs.

Its also about attitude. Many farmers still have the same size of paddy they had 10 years ago. But then they used a small long nose tractor to do the work. Not sure but maybe they cost 80-100,000. But now there is a Kubota infestation sweeping the land. So when Lek sees his neighbour with a brand new orange machine, he has to have one too, because it will make him more efficient. But, the Kubota costs many times more than his old tractor, and doesn't really increase the yield, just makes life easier. So together with 'must have' better fertiliser, the costs have spiralled, but he can still only get two or maybe 3 crops per year. As myself and others have said before on this forum, farmers in Thailand are not that different from farmers elsewhere. They know a lot about production, but not so much about economics and marketing.

When you have a problem, the best solution is always to identify the problem, and fix if permanently. Thailand has the same problem found the world over-a non-sustainable farming scheme. When you must have petrochemicals in order to grow, yet not only does the continued purchase of said chemicals eat way into your profit, the price of these chemicals continues to rise, regardless of the selling price of your crops, and the chemicals themselves degrade your soil, meaning you will need to buy an ever increasing amount just to get the same yields. The idea of yearly throwing more money at your farming problems, but not solving them, is absurd. Especially since there is a sane, financially sound, permanently sustainable alternative.

Which offers a healthier, environmentally safe future for Thailand-cars, or rice, as it's leading export? So why not take a fraction of the monies wasted on the scams/schemes from the past, (rice-pledging, 1 tablet, et al), and give it to the Department of Agriculture, and The King's Project, to be spent on devising and implementing only 100% sustainable farming methods? Sustainable farming isn't rocket science, and given the improvements made in the last generation, to methods used successfully for thousands of years, plus our better understanding of crop nutritional needs, Thailand could quickly turn around it's unprofitable farming techniques, very quickly. Hell, the worlds foremost authority on aquaponics, a PHDer in aquaculture lives right here in Thailand!

Following the failed western model, where you pollute your water table, continually destroy your environment, only to lose money anyway, makes little sense.

I love fluffy sweet powder coated posts like this. Where in the world do you come from saying that western farming systems are non-sustainable! Proof please. "when you must have petrochemicals" errrr, where do superphosphate come from, they are from islands of bird shit, not petrochemicals, unless are you are referring to tractors needing it to plough and harvest. So does that mean the millions of tones yearly of rice, wheat, barley and corn that feed 6 billion people already is a failed system... sorry I see a lot of BS here!

And you want to give more and more money to the Kings Projects. They function perfectly fine as they are. Throwing more money at them is not necessary and I have visited over 30 of them country wide. Sustainable farming is not rocket science, but if 2 people taking care of 5 rai for the purpose of feeding 2 adults plus 3 children is sustainable. they sorry, 5 of the 6 billion people will go hungry very quickly. I have harvested 1000's of tons of wheat, barley and beans in my life, enough for me, but I have feed 1000's of others. So explain to me sustainability in your fairy world of perfection. And don't start on aquaponics,,, lovely idea, but get your head out of the clouds. You have already used the word sustainable farming. Aquaponics requires far more input per output. I suggest you learn a little about such systems before waving a flag to high.

I guess or I hope that some well educated policeman has been reading this thread or someone. (maybe put a boot up someones ass)

As I just got a call from the policeman who said he would originally help said his battery died odd it was ringing when I called it all day yesterday.

Hopefully I am correct and someone has put a boot up his ass or I might end up dead walking the to the station.

Just thought i would write that in case any of you hear of a foreigner from the UK having a fatal accident.

Let's see I want them to follow the money usually the easiest way to catch an idiot.

I don't want the money back either I don't care about the money I care about the girl, right now I have some ideas on where she is but she is too scared to call me, not allowed to, they have been trying to keep us apart for over a month now.

All I want is for her to be free if possible have these scumbags arrested if not I'll settle for the girls freedom for now.

Wake up and smell the roses. You have been taken for a ride. Tears and pleas for help my ass..... Stop thinking you are saving a soul. Your not. She can get away anytime she wants. How easy is it to hide in Bangkok. White headed me could disappear for a year if I wanted too.... I still here shaking my head and wonder if you will realise you are the one that needs saving!

Honestly give me a break. How obvious is it. This girl is in on the scam. You are being scammed by not only the girls friends/boyfriend/drug partners whatever... YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED BY THE GIRL. Don't waste time trying to tell me how much she loves you and wants to get away. You are being an idiot. Forget her and do not under any condition contact or let her into your place again.

A Vios!!! Can moderators change the title.

He missed his stop for Pattaya obviously...

More likely he was depressed about going back to UK women, after two weeks in Pattaya :-)

I would hope not! The whole scam was a money pit by the Shins and their cronies. You can help the farmers but not like this.

And you are the expert on Agricultural subsidies. Since your such a prolific poster on TV, I would hope you have a significant contribution as to how they can help farmers other that the rather pathetic comment above. Maybe 6 months ago it would have been a fair comment to point out such a point. Given the passing of events, I really think your posts are just vendictive rant and hold zero contribution to a real discusion.

Circa early 2012 Tax rebates begin under first-car scheme The Finance Ministry yesterday started paying tax rebates to first-car owners. So far 250,000 buyers have applied for rebates worth Bt18 billion. Toyota Vios, Mazda2 and Honda Brio cars and Isuzu and Toyota pickup trucks are the preferred brands under the scheme.

The new-auto market is expected to reach an all-time high of 1.2 million units this year, thanks to stimulus programmes such as the first-car-buyer scheme as well as the launch of many new or redesigned models.

Deputy Finance Minister Viroon Tejapaibul transferred Bt3.56 million to 47 car buyers who have met the eligibility requirement of owning their car for one year.

The project started on September 16 last year and comes to an end on December 31 this year.

The Comptroller-Generals' Department transfers funds to Krung Thai Bank, which deposits the money into the accounts of the recipients every 5th and 20th of the month.

The government has set aside Bt7 billion to cover tax rebates for the new fiscal year beginning yesterday. If the budget is not enough, the government will tap the central fund to top it up.

"Don't worry about it. We have a strong fiscal position as we have treasury reserves worth more than Bt500 billion," Viroon said in response to concerns over the loss of such a large amount of tax revenue.

The incentive programme will meet the target of 500,000 units and tax rebates of about Bt30 billion, he added.

Somchai Poonsawasdi, director-general of the Excise Department, said that as of yesterday, there were 250,744 car buyers applying for Bt18 billion in tax rebates.

Passenger cars had the lion's share with 141,000 units, followed by standard pickups with 54,000. The rest are double-cab pickups.

Car sales under the scheme are expected to beat the target, he said.

According to auto companies, many buyers of B-segment cars with 1,500cc engines, double-cab pickups and eco-cars have applied for the tax rebate.

For example, 70 per cent of Toyota Vios buyers and 60 per cent of Mazda2 buyers have applied for excise-tax rebates up to the limit of Bt100,000 per car.

Eco-car buyers are also participating even though their rebates are lower because of the lower excise-tax rate on this type of vehicle. For example, Honda Brio buyers would get back slightly more than Bt70,000.

Eco-friendly vehicles such as the Honda Jazz Hybrid, which enjoys a low 10-per cent excise rate, also qualify, with a rebate of about Bt50,000 on offer.

The government started with the target of 500,000 vehicles and Bt30 billion in rebates. However, it extended the December 31 delivery deadline to next year to help carmakers whose production suffered from parts-supply disruption caused by last year's flood, so the figures are expected to increase dramatically.

For me sex is about making babies, ladyboys can't do that!! Easy decision. I need a girl.

So if your wife could not have children would you stop having sex?

you bet....... and start having it with a fresh 20 something uni student.. 5555

For me sex is about making babies, ladyboys can't do that!! Easy decision. I need a girl.

They can make babies.. With another chick haha

That happened to a couple in Chiangmai, Tom girl(husband) with Ladyboy girlfriend.. The husband got pregnant.... hilarious.

welcome to Thailand

For me sex is about making babies, ladyboys can't do that!! Easy decision. I need a girl.

See if you can't get more information and contact the Norway Embassy. There are not many Norweigians and there government services are best of the best.

What "superstar" is the OP talking about? Is the groom Thai or farang? Pictures would certainly clear things up.

Groom is Thai and owner of a mobile phone company

Jealous are you?

To the OP, wait 'till you get older and you shall find out yourself.

Export shop or called Export 71 in Chiangmai has stock overruns of western producers. Have to search a little sometimes or go there often, but have everything you need. You can find them as stand alone shops or in some malls.

Thank you to those that have educated me on ping times in general. Looks like in Thailnad we are stuck with 250ms or greater Thai-Zurich and back no matter what IP provider we use.

TLS started working today. No changes on my end.

Question, using what gateway out of Thailand would yield the fastest possible ping? I have TOT and CAT fibre optic out of my factory, use a DTAC 3G phone, and have a service routing through an STS Group gateway from my Bangkok condo. None of them will yield a ping faster than 300Mbps to a Washington based server using OOKLA. Desparately seeking a 55-60Mbps connection.

Ping time is in milliseconds (ms); not in Mbps which is a measure of bandwidth/download or upload speed. Impossible to get a ping time of much less than 200ms from Thailand to the U.S. until you figure out how to make you internet electrons go faster than the speed of light--that's hard to do except in scifi movies.

Sent from my Samsung S4

Thank you PIb. Seems strange that our New York based company can get 45-55ms from New York to Geneva. I thought we should have been able to do much better than 300ms which is the best I have got to far. (P.S. thank you for the correction)

TLS started working today. No changes on my end.

Question, using what gateway out of Thailand would yield the fastest possible ping? I have TOT and CAT fibre optic out of my factory, use a DTAC 3G phone, and have a service routing through an STS Group gateway from my Bangkok condo. None of them will yield a ping faster than 300Mbps to a Washington based server using OOKLA. Desparately seeking a 55-60Mbps connection.

While this is an extreme case, this is not so uncommon in Thailand as we would like to think.

I came across several cases in the Phitsanulok area when I was running a scholarship scheme there. Very often, even the teachers did not find out until the situation had been going on for some time.

Just one case.... a boy in M.6 who was working in the evenings to provide for himself and his insane uncle. The boy managed to get a university place notwithstanding. He never told his teachers (face, I suppose).

Another... a boy who worked all hours and all trades to pay for his father's dialysis treatment (this was before the 30 baht scheme). His home was empty; everything had been sold to pay for the treatment.

There are many fine people, just ordinary people, in this country where we have made our homes, and it sickens me to see the scumbags who never have anything good to say for things Thai.

At the moment I send money to six families to help with school fees for 8 children. None of them are as hard up and this little fella, but I do encourage each and everyone to look for your own cases local or within your networks to help out a little. Personally I checked that alcohol and drug abuse was not involved in each case and that my money goes direct to education.

OK, right here on this site over the past year or so, in posting newspaper articles at various points in the process, we have read:

That the "revolving fund" at tha BAAC of 500 bil. bt was used up and 200 bil more was needed.

We have been told that the additional 200 bil was added by the BAAC.

We have been told that the BAAC had 200 bil of its own capital, and that it used 150 bil to additionally fund tghe rice scheme.

Now we are at 850 bil, and that's before the latest harvest.

We have been told so may times that government sales such as to China and The Phils were happening but they never did. That is, unless someone other than the bank got paid.

We have been told that a very large amount of rice was smuggled in from Cambodia and sold as Thai rice at the pledging price.

We have been told that a large amount of rice is rotten or missing.

We have been told that the amount the government, using loans from the BAAC paid was about 3x today's market price for good fresh rice.

Now the new government is somehow raising billions more to actually pay the farmers, or so it appears. But this isn't money from the sale of rice.

Rice isn't being sold.

Is it 1+ trillion baht plus what is being paid out now, less the actual value of whatever could be sold? We have been told that if they release the rice stockpiles onto the world market the price of rice will really crash.

Someone has his work cut out for him in spades.

And we are told that Thaksin's visible fortune as reported by Forbes increased a whopping $1.1 billion dollars just last year almost tripling, and Forbes said that Thaksin said the government owed him the money. Why?

You guys are nuts. You really think Thaksin has taken 1.1billion baht in payments to line his pockets! Pretty easy to prove. Let's wait for the NACC to file charges. Until that time I hokd my breath and my tongue.

As for the difficulty. This is a simple two page excel file. Goven that the file would have to be about a kilometer long to record all transactions. Expenes (rice purchase), other expenses easily catagorised into about 25 groups or less. Revenue ( sales to date) and a bank reconciliation. Starting balance, In, out, ending balance! Reconciliation... Done.

So I'll take from your reply that it is a hunting expedition with no specific charges yet. I'm interested because I think the Rice Scheme was a good thing and hope it or some subsidy like it will be continued to support the rural areas. It would be too bad if embezzlement, outright theft or criminal mismanagement would prove to taint the entire program.

People are usually happier and more content when their problems seem to have melted away under some spell like that of alcohol. Unfortunately the next morning they often awake with a headache and find their problems have returned. Of course they could choose to just keep on drinking. Facing problems sober and head-on is not a lot of fun for anyone.

Honest bill i tried to follow your logic but failed, So you believe any person who was involved in the loss of 500 billion + missing rice has since this coup turned to alcohol?

My logic should be easy to follow. I asked "are there specific charges?" I could add 'against specific people'? You seem to believe there is a loss of 500 billion baht and missing rice. From where or whom did you hear these figures and reports? I've heard rumors and allegations of this too, but that was during the Red Shirt/Yellow Shirt tug-of-war and very subject to skepticism - at least IMO. Is that what this NACC investigation is about?

And 500 billion baht is certainly hyperbole, isn't it? The junta's current payments of the delayed payments are said to total 92 billion. In my area about 2/3 of the farmers had already been paid by the former government. Event if that was only 1/2 my quick math tells me the total couldn't be much more than 200 billion. Where did the claim 500 billion loss come from? And even at that there is no "loss" of 500 or 200 billion. There is still rice to sell, isn't there? And the program never was intended to make a profit or even break even, was it? It was a subsidy. The government bought rice at above-market prices and was then to sell it overseas. Any difference would be made up out of the general fund. That's how a subsidy works.

Is there rice missing? Again, I've heard rumors and allegations of this but have seen no definite accounting. I assume the NACC investigation will cover this also and determine if there is, how much and whether this is due to mismanagement or theft.

My alcohol analogy might be harder to follow. It was in response to GoodThaiGirl's remark that "thailand is much more happier (sic) and stable since 9 days ago". It was merely to remind that some things bring happiness in the short term, but not always a happiness that lasts.

Thanks for engaging with me in a discussion about the Rice Pledging Scheme. I really do want to know why so many Farangs and Thais on this forum seem to be so vehemently disgusted and opposed to it, when in my experience out here in the rural areas it was seen to be of great benefit to the famers and farming communities. It's hard to distinguish between the objections focusing on the program itself, or on just the alleged mismanagement of the program, or just a dislike of the former government in general.

Your (or anyone else's) comments would be appreciated...

Bill, you speak too much logic. TV is full of city dwellers hell bent on throwing mud with little consiquence to their collective action. I have previously supported the Rice Pledging Scheme as my father was a director of the Australian Barley Board which functioned as a strategic marketing authority. The main reason is to bypass the theives known as grain traders. They do and never will work to the benefit of the farmer. They will always profit, not matter how long they go to make a deal. Agricultural subsidies are used by the most weathly nations to the benefit of market manipulation. They control the end prices and that exact point is what the Shinawatra's know and have tried to create. The only way this will not benefit in the same way is if you have idiots like the NACC that provide the market with enought doubt that the scheme might collapse. I would like to see the NACC put over the hot grills for making there investigations so public. According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) figures, the average rate of “producer support estimate” for the heavily supported commodities in the United States ranges from about 55 percent of the value of production for sugar to about 22 percent for oilseeds. The U.S. government heavily subsidizes grains, oilseeds, cotton, sugar, and dairy products. Most other agriculture—including beef, pork, poultry, hay, fruits, tree nuts, and vegetables (accounting for about half of the total value of production)—receives only minimal government support. U.S. farm programs have cost about $156 billion per year in government budget outlays in recent years. Among OECD members (a group of high-income countries), “producer support estimate” rates average about 31 percent of total revenue for the main grain, oilseed, sugar, and livestock products. The most interesting fact is that the highest average rates of support are for rice (about 80 percent), where most of the support derives from trade barriers and direct payments. Support to farmers by Japan’s and Korea’s governments is a large part of the total world subsidy for rice. The highest national average support equivalent rates, across all major commodities, are offered in Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland, with average subsidies of about 65–75 percent of the value of production, and in Japan and Korea, with support rates of 60–65 percent. The lowest subsidy rates (less than 4 percent) are found in Australia and New Zealand. The average support rate in the European Unicon is about 35 percent of the value of production. However, in Asia as incomes grew and the population on farms dwindled in such countries as South Korea and Taiwan, those countries’ governments shifted from penalizing farmers to subsidizing them and protecting them from imports. These countries, along with Japan, now have among the highest subsidy and protection rates in the world. Funny that Thailand does not even raise a mention! Japan 1.21%, Korea 2.05%, EU 0.73, Indonesia 3.63%, China 2.37% and USA 1.00% (all statistics from Organistation for Economic Co-operation and Development, http://www.oecd.org/tad/agricultural-policies/producerandconsumersupportestimatesdatabase.htm) I think a good rational source, not wiki or any other less trusted resource. So I say to most TV persons here. What about the rice scheme? What has it really cost, and can you show that it is well outside that of other large agricultural export nations.

Well that should be enough to take on the junta!

I thought the NACC would be defunct given the cancellation of the constitution. Like the CC

Apricots are my favourite! I guess that's why I got yellow fever !! 555

This story sounds bogus as hell. I exercise in the mornings when in Pattaya but why would I accept a drink from ladyboys? Or anyone else for that matter?

He forgot to mention the type of exercise intended!