Rice Pledging by the numbers

[LarryBird]

All we seem to hear about on here is what a giant fiasco this is. I am interested in what the actual numbers work out to be.

How much will be lost, due to the poor economics of it al?

How much was siphoned off due to corruption? Isn't this a problem of the courts?

-- An aspect I don't see talked about much, but is a fundamental problem I have with it, is that the land owners are typically the wealthy, and they lease the land to the farmers. So, this program inflated what people were willing to pay to lease the land. This $$ was paid upfront, leaving the farmers in a bad spot, and the rich got richer.

Just looking to have a better fact based discussion, rather than the usual name calling.

My own personal stance on this with the way I currently understand it, is that in theory it wasn't a great idea, but perhaps offering the farmers a better way to collectively bargain to the world market doesn't sound like a bad idea. I am also ok with some people that did some back breaking work getting a little more 'than they deserve'. I don't see why/how that should sink a country. It seems to me it wasn't a terrible idea, just that they set the price too high/unrealistic.

LB

[CharlieH]

Similiar thread already running

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/703712-corruption-within-the-rice-pledging-scheme/

[Crossy]

Similiar thread already running

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/703712-corruption-within-the-rice-pledging-scheme/

Indeed, let's keep all the discussion in one place.