Guaranteed Cassava Price?

[somo]

I have heard talk of the goverment guaranteeing a cassava price of B1.80/kilo but have no idea as to how sign up for it or how it would operate. I also think it is limited to 60 tons/person.

If anyone can shed any light on it that would be great.

[anthoma]

What i understand is that the goverment contract with Bank of Agriculture (BAAC) to buy cassava from farmers for a guaranteed price.

My wife no made contract with BAAC to deliver unntil 240 tons of cassava and the price i january was 1,90 bath pr. kilo but they discount 10% for the dirt. They say that the price will go up 5 satang pr. month unntil april.

So my wife have no at document from BAAC saying that we can deliver 240 ton for a price of 1,90 bath pr. kilo. Yippi. BUT. BAAC contract with a lokal deliveristation to recieve the cassava from the farmers. My wife went there today to ask if we could start bringing the cassava. NO WAY. They already had to much cassava so we had to wait. We put our name on a list and we are no number 377 to deliver. We ask when its our turn we can bring all. NO WAY. When its our turn we can bring our tractor ore truck, but to deliver next time we will be on the bottom on the list again and have to wait for new turn.

The rumour says that merchant from other district buy cassava from farmers for 1,05 baht pr. kilo and bring it here to deliveristation on big trucks and get payd 1,90 from the goverment. Thats why our deliverstation is over theyr limit of capasity.

So the situasjon i hopeless. We have cassava together with cashewnuts and the cashewnuts start to come and we should harvest cassava to make it more easy to get the cahewnuts when they come, but good knows how long we have to wait to sell for goverment price. If we bring to other deliverystations we now get 1,05 baht for fresh roots ant 2,60 for dried. I have a feeling i will loose big money on cassava this year.

[Lickey]

We have the same problem, the first time we plant cassava and the world money market drys up, fuel prices go down so bio-fuels suffer more, we sold at 1bht 25 satang mid-december, now the going rate is 1bht05satang in Namsom district,

Mrs went to the factory yesterday and had a go at them, got the price up to 1bht27satang, but i said no, it can stay in the ground another year, its only 3 rai but if fuel prices go up once the recession is over, then perhaps we can recuperate a bit of money and cover our losses so far.

Lickey.

[rice555]

Hello Lickey, if they keep having news like this, you'll be lucky to get Bt.1 a kg. as it's now being edged out of this market.

rice555

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/econom...axed-on-low-use

[somo]

Thanks for all the detailed info anthoma

What you say fits with the bits of info I have and it seems a classic example of the village farmer being ripped of by the businessmen but what's to be done other than hope the price picks up through demand which sems unlikely at the moment.

TIT

[anthoma]

Now i am really pisst of. As i wrote earlier on this topic we have a contract with BAAC to sell up to 240 tonn of cassava for at goverment guaranteed price on 1,90 bath pr kilo ricing 5 satang per month after january. The problem is that the merchant that BAAC contract with say that they cannot take more cassava and that they cannot take cassava from us next month to.

Today the officelady of this merchant comes to our house and say that for 5% she can fix so that we can bring fresh roots to them now, but they have to discharge us with 18%. So we will loose 23% of our harvest to this merchant. They also say that even we have contract to deliver up to 240 tonns they will only take 170 tonn, the rest of our quota they will use for them selves to buy cassava from farmers to sell til the goverment price. We have to cash out the money for them on our contract, and then pay them back.

So they take 23% of the price the goverment guarantee the farmers, and they use 70 tonn of our quota to buy cheep cassava and sell to goverment.

The option we have is to just wait and see what happend. The price now will be 2 baht pr kilo minus 23% so we get 1,54. Better than the farmers here now that only gets 0,95. but im pisst of loosing all this money to this merchant. There is only one merchant in our district that has contract with BAAC so they can do what they like.

I say to my wife that if this was happening in my homecountry i would contact the headoffice of BAAC ore go to the ministry ore even go to the newspapers, but she say that they dont do that here and she dont like to do anything about it.

So what the goverment do to benefit the farmers is not going to the farmers but to the merchants.

[Lickey]

Im totally pissed offwith cassava too, we planted 9rai last year on some spare ground, cost, 33k we got back 15k, sis in law ploughed in/uprooteed 50 lamyai bushes and planted cassava, sold at a loss and now the ground is barren, and no plans to plant anything, the land is just a mess with cassava sticks llaying all over the place, listen to the thais, this will be good, that will be good, ect ect, all the thais will follow, not me, i will stick to a regime now, and it makes me a lot of beer money, ever seen a thai farmer on a push bike?

[Gary A]

I watched thousands of rai that was planted to rice and corn be diverted to cassava. My wife was building more paddy while this was going on. I'm now glad that I didn't say much to her about it.

My wife has this look that she gives me when I mention anything about farming and the government. The look clearly asks how stupid are you? Not long ago the government was giving away rubber tree seedlings. Now the government wants those trees ripped out.

[soidog2]

Now i am really pisst of.

So what the goverment do to benefit the farmers is not going to the farmers but to the merchants.

anthoma!

Out here, (Buriram) I do grow a lot of cassava; selling under contract to BAAC, never had such problems.

This year it is taking a lot of time to get paid, over 60 days. With the huge price difference, it pays to wait.

Could you post the offending firm’s name & location ? Would like to know !

Thanks

[anthoma]

Hey soidog2

So you really get paid 1,90-2 baht pr kilo and they dont discharge you anything?

I have to correct somthing that i wrote in my last post. I said that the officelady would help us for 5%. The correct is that she ask for 5 satang pr kilo. But still that is 2,5% of 2 bath and when they take 18% for the dirt, they discharge us 20,5 % so we get paid 1,60 instead of 2 bath. We hope to get about 140 tonns this year so the 20% they take from us is alot of money, about 56 000 bath. With 1,60 bath per kilo we will only balance this year- Before we started harvesting i already paid 160 000 bath for work, tractor, fertilizer and herbicide. I think the harvest will cost us about 60 000 bath so the expences will be 220 000 bath. With 1,60 per kilo and 140 tonn we should get 224 000. So maybee 4000 bath profit. We have about 40 rai with cassava.

The company that we sell our cassava to have no english name. My wife say the thai initials i something like "Or Kor Sor". They are locatet inn Nachaluai district south in Ubon province.

[soidog2]

Hey soidog2

So you really get paid 1,90-2 baht pr kilo and they dont discharge you anything?

Ok , as you expected , you’re being taken for a ride.

Depending on the soil you’re farming, on one 12/13 ton truck, the biggest deduction should not exceed 3/400 kilos, per truck load.

The most important price factor is the starch content, for the full-advertised price you need to have excellent content.The mill, or where you signed up, will have a printed schedule showing price v. starch content.

Lastly your area is relatively new cassava growing place, you must learn to get your costs down & yield up .

Despite what other posters wrote, it’s a good business, we grow on over 100 rais and make a decent profit most years.

Every year giant trucks from Ubon come down and buy cassava trees from our area to start new plantations.

Good luck

[cassavainkhorat]

Hi all,

I am a new member to the forum. I am currently doing my phd research on Thai cassava value chains. I have just returned to my university in the UK having completed a 5 months' fieldwork in Thailand (I was doing a case study on Khorat). During my fieldwork, I struggled to get firsthand experience of farmers who participate in the guaranteed cassava price project, mainly due to language barriers or difficulty in finding willing / available respondents (also my interviews were done mostly with the factories). This is a shame as I understand that the guaranteed price project is a major component of the cassava industry, and missing out on what is actually happening on the farmers side means failure to give a complete understanding of the industy. I found your discussions in this forum tremendously useful. I hope to summarise the discussions for my academic research purpose, as this pretty much confirms my fieldwork findings, but much clearer simply for language reasons. Is there anyone in the form whom I can contact about this, like a moderator? I can assure you in advance that no mention of names etc will be made, any any direct quotation should it be taken, can only be done with prior consent of the person concerned. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Edited April 3, 2009 by cassavainkhorat

[Khonwan]

Hi all,

I am a new member to the forum. I am currently doing my phd research on Thai cassava value chains. I have just returned to my university in the UK having completed a 5 months' fieldwork in Thailand (I was doing a case study on Khorat). During my fieldwork, I struggled to get firsthand experience of farmers who participate in the guaranteed cassava price project, mainly due to language barriers or difficulty in finding willing / available respondents (also my interviews were done mostly with the factories). This is a shame as I understand that the guaranteed price project is a major component of the cassava industry, and missing out on what is actually happening on the farmers side means failure to give a complete understanding of the industy. I found your discussions in this forum tremendously useful. I hope to summarise the discussions for my academic research purpose, as this pretty much confirms my fieldwork findings, but much clearer simply for language reasons. Is there anyone in the form whom I can contact about this, like a moderator? I can assure you in advance that no mention of names etc will be made, any any direct quotation should it be taken, can only be done with prior consent of the person concerned. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Hi cassavainkhorat

I'll PM you next day or two with some personal and some general info.

Rgds

Khonwan

[cassavainkhorat]

Hi all,

I am a new member to the forum. I am currently doing my phd research on Thai cassava value chains. I have just returned to my university in the UK having completed a 5 months' fieldwork in Thailand (I was doing a case study on Khorat). During my fieldwork, I struggled to get firsthand experience of farmers who participate in the guaranteed cassava price project, mainly due to language barriers or difficulty in finding willing / available respondents (also my interviews were done mostly with the factories). This is a shame as I understand that the guaranteed price project is a major component of the cassava industry, and missing out on what is actually happening on the farmers side means failure to give a complete understanding of the industy. I found your discussions in this forum tremendously useful. I hope to summarise the discussions for my academic research purpose, as this pretty much confirms my fieldwork findings, but much clearer simply for language reasons. Is there anyone in the form whom I can contact about this, like a moderator? I can assure you in advance that no mention of names etc will be made, any any direct quotation should it be taken, can only be done with prior consent of the person concerned. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Hi cassavainkhorat

I'll PM you next day or two with some personal and some general info.

Rgds

Khonwan

Hi Khonwan, can you advice how to I PM you? i am new to this forum, sorry. but would really hope to hear back from you on the issue above.

Cheers

[catwho]

Hi all,

I am a new member to the forum. I am currently doing my phd research on Thai cassava value chains. I have just returned to my university in the UK having completed a 5 months' fieldwork in Thailand (I was doing a case study on Khorat). During my fieldwork, I struggled to get firsthand experience of farmers who participate in the guaranteed cassava price project, mainly due to language barriers or difficulty in finding willing / available respondents (also my interviews were done mostly with the factories). This is a shame as I understand that the guaranteed price project is a major component of the cassava industry, and missing out on what is actually happening on the farmers side means failure to give a complete understanding of the industy. I found your discussions in this forum tremendously useful. I hope to summarise the discussions for my academic research purpose, as this pretty much confirms my fieldwork findings, but much clearer simply for language reasons. Is there anyone in the form whom I can contact about this, like a moderator? I can assure you in advance that no mention of names etc will be made, any any direct quotation should it be taken, can only be done with prior consent of the person concerned. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Hi cassavainkhorat

I'll PM you next day or two with some personal and some general info.

Rgds

Khonwan

Hi Khonwan, can you advice how to I PM you? i am new to this forum, sorry. but would really hope to hear back from you on the issue above.

Cheers

click on the arrow on khowan's name and send message