Farm prices, competitiveness key areas of focus for new ministers

[rooster59]

Farm prices, competitiveness key areas of focus for new ministers

By The Nation

 

 

The new Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister and his deputies aim to shore up plunging farm prices as their top priority while at the same time improving farm competitiveness and farm production security.

 

Agriculture Minister Krisada Boonrat said he was not sure whether key farm produce, including rubber and rice, were affected by politics, but what is certain is their plunging prices are a problem for farmers.

 

The ministers said they would help one another to lift the prices of farm produce, especially rubber, within their first three months in office.

 

Measures and planning to stabilise the prices and ensure farm competitiveness and security would be their long-term focus, he said.

 

“It’s always our farmers’ problems – they grow rubber, rice and so on and lose profits. The challenge is how we can stop such an endless cycle,” said Krisada.

 

Deputy Agriculture Minister Luck Wajananawat said farm cooperatives or groupings need to be strengthened to improve farm competitiveness and security.

Farmers should have tools to help regulate their produce and increase competitiveness, including their own silos as well as community-based business. 

 

Negotiation power, he said, should be drawn back from merchants and put in farmers’ hands.

 

Wiwat Salyakamthorn, another deputy minister, said he was assigned to help handle fundamental infrastructure including irrigation. Wiwat said he would adopt His Majesty the late King Rama IX’s royal projects and guidance to the ministry’s work, including irrigation, especially for those outside the irrigated area.

 

The Kok Nong Na Model is his famed water management model adapted from the late King, under which sources of water are linked to hilly forests and fields, which help sustain the whole system.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/politics/30332993

 

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2017-12-02

[worgeordie]

Plunging farm prices !, not for fruit and vegetables,thats

for sure.plus the price of Rice is supposed to have dropped

BUT not in the shops,markets,the middle men seemed to be

doing very well.

regards worgeordie

[Srikcir]

12 hours ago, rooster59 said:

The new Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister and his deputies aim to shore up plunging farm prices as their top priority

Might as well stop reading here.

 

Shoring up farm prices has been a failed policy for rubber and rice by previous regimes including   juntas. Low, unsustainable farm prices is a macro-economic problem requiring restructuring of the entire agricultural sector but the Prayut regime keeps treating it as a micro-economic problem by largely targeting specific elements of production on a product-by-product basis.

 

While it would be perceived as a downgrade, I'd like to see DPM Somkid Jatusripitak as Minster of Agriculture.

[dinsdale]

13 hours ago, worgeordie said:

Plunging farm prices !, not for fruit and vegetables,thats

for sure.plus the price of Rice is supposed to have dropped

BUT not in the shops,markets,the middle men seemed to be

doing very well.

regards worgeordie

I think it means prices for the producers not retail e.g. rice Bt6 a kilo for the farmers. Farmers lose money.