Maize farmers plan court action to suspend imports of wheat

[webfact]

Maize farmers plan court action to suspend imports of wheat
By PETCHANET PRATRUANGKRAI 
THE NATION

 

BANGKOK: -- A GROUP of maize farmers from the Central and Northern regions plan to file a petition with the Administrative Court calling for the suspension of wheat imports as a way to combat a dramatic decline in the market price of their produce.

The farmers are from Ang Thong, Nakhon Ratchasima, Phetchabun, Mae Hong Son, Phitsanulok, Tak, Nan, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces. 

Wheat imports have ballooned since tariffs on the commodity were waived in 2014.

 

Full story: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/news/business/etc/30298744

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2016-10-31

[tbthailand]

This growing corn thing was such a brilliant idea, ... 

 

 

19 minutes ago, webfact said:

A GROUP of maize farmers from the Central and Northern regions plan to file a petition with the Administrative Court calling for the suspension of wheat imports as a way to combat a dramatic decline in the market price of their produce.

 

The generals are soooo qualified to run this country. 

[bokningar]

Did I not read that rice farmer where told to switch from rice to maize for better profit?

Maybe not a good advice judging this article.  

[MaiChai]

It seems other countries can produce and send it to Thailand cheaper than Thai farmers can produce? They probably need to understand why this is possible and try and compete? I must admit i am surprised at the cost of some things in Thailand; especially produced or grown in Thailand products.

[Brer Fox]

2 hours ago, bokningar said:

Did I not read that rice farmer where told to switch from rice to maize for better profit?

Maybe not a good advice judging this article.  

Yes you are correct. It was only a few days ago The Agricultural Extension Department  Director-General Mr Somchai Charnnarongkul who issued a statement urging rice growers to convert to maize.

He predicted  "yields of 900-1,000 kgs per rai which is translated into 2,000-4,000 baht profit per rai".

This seems to be yet another classic example by the authorities of how to stuff up the agricultural sector by people who don't have a clue about the real world and live in the rarefied air of the tall towers of the military bureaucracy.

[fruitman]

I won't eat corn, don't like it. Wheat is much better food. In Europe we import corn to feed to the pigs.

 

Getting tired of the crying farmers. If you can't afford that big pickuptruck then sell it. Don't force us what to eat, it won't work anyway. If they go on like this we might start to hate ALL Thai produce and the farmers as well...

[BuaBS]

36 minutes ago, fruitman said:

I won't eat corn, don't like it. Wheat is much better food. In Europe we import corn to feed to the pigs.

 

Getting tired of the crying farmers. If you can't afford that big pickuptruck then sell it. Don't force us what to eat, it won't work anyway. If they go on like this we might start to hate ALL Thai produce and the farmers as well...

I eat corn , delicious and non fattening.

If corn is so cheap, why is popcorn so expensive ?

If imported wheat is so cheap , why is bread in Thailand so tastless and expensive ?

 

[whatproblem]

7 minutes ago, BuaBS said:

I eat corn , delicious and non fattening.

If corn is so cheap, why is popcorn so expensive ?

If imported wheat is so cheap , why is bread in Thailand so tastless and expensive ?

 

Because everyone here cheats each other they can't form cooperatives to get better prices because someone will cheat them and they know this ,so they are always at the mercy of the middle men who make huge profits

[fruitman]

5 minutes ago, whatproblem said:

Because everyone here cheats each other they can't form cooperatives to get better prices because someone will cheat them and they know this ,so they are always at the mercy of the middle men who make huge profits

 

And they all cheat eachother because there's no police.

 

This is slowly killing Thailand....the rest of the world doesn't have that problem and develops every day.

[Kasset Tak]

The big problems of Thailand, do the same as always and do what your neighbour do.
In the village I lived before someone opened a new hair dresser, a month later there was another hairdresser opened and end the month after that they had 3 hair dressers... today 3 years later there are no hairdressers left as there was not enough customers to support 3 hairdressers!
The problem is that it's the same in agriculture: the price for pork goes up and a month later there are 1000 new pig farmers, the price of eggs goes down and 1000 chicken farmers closes their farms. There is no consistency in their work and they usually think only for today , maybe this harvest but never their harvest in the coming years!
When the government talked about farming corn in the past to many started producing corn... just like rubber and cassava. Just because there is an underproduction today doesn't mean that it will be an underproduction tomorrow... especially if there are 1000's more farming that crop!

[nontabury]

  If you compare the price and quality of Bread in Cambodia,it always amazes me how expensive it is here in Thailand.

[The man from udon]

They are just trying to monopolise.i feel for the farmers as I live amongst them but this is the old mafia in their blood coming out of them.basic idea is ban imports or tax the nuts out it and then we can charge what we want.what ever government are in power they will cock it up,cook the books and come out with ridiculous ideas that have no chance of working.this country is 100 yrs behind most of the world and will be in 100 years time.no business sense at all.most people work just to eat in this country a bit like Africa.there would be a lot more starving,stray kids on the street if it wasn't for the expat social security system.as for the education system,i bet more people in Africa speak English per head than Thailand.

[bark]

1 hour ago, fruitman said:

I won't eat corn, don't like it. Wheat is much better food. In Europe we import corn to feed to the pigs.

 

Getting tired of the crying farmers. If you can't afford that big pickuptruck then sell it. Don't force us what to eat, it won't work anyway. If they go on like this we might start to hate ALL Thai produce and the farmers as well...

You can make a lot of good food with corn flour. Healthier then white wheat flour also.

[BuaBS]

Forgot another one :

If farmers only get 3-4 B/kg for corn , why are cornflakes twice the price of europe ?

Middlemen .

Cheaper corn + cheaper factories (labour)  in Thailand = twice as expensive as expensive West.

[fruitman]

Just now, bark said:

You can make a lot of good food with corn flour. Healthier then white wheat flour also.

 

Corn is pigfood. I eat woo-wee blead with extra sunflowerseeds and so...breadtalk sells it for 100B  a half bread. (Yup very expensive but it's the only bread i can eat in Thailand).

 

Kangaroomeat is also nice and so is Ostrich and duck...let the farmers breed them..

[BuaBS]

There are different kind of corns . Some are only good for animal feed . At least corn is tasty and useful , where as rice is not even food , just a "filler" .

Wheat is great ( bread , cake,....) but such a fattener.

Edited October 31, 2016 by BuaBS

[bark]

2 minutes ago, fruitman said:

 

Corn is pigfood. I eat woo-wee blead with extra sunflowerseeds and so...breadtalk sells it for 100B  a half bread. (Yup very expensive but it's the only bread i can eat in Thailand).

 

Kangaroomeat is also nice and so is Ostrich and duck...let the farmers breed them..

Eat corn beard for 30 baht, for half loaf. Buy a bag of sunflower seeds for 10 baht, and 2 beer at 30 baht each =100 baht.

Now I got you think ! Beer and bread, wow, I can eat and get drunk.

[monkey4u]

2 hours ago, fruitman said:

I won't eat corn, don't like it. Wheat is much better food. In Europe we import corn to feed to the pigs.

 

Getting tired of the crying farmers. If you can't afford that big pickuptruck then sell it. Don't force us what to eat, it won't work anyway. If they go on like this we might start to hate ALL Thai produce and the farmers as well...

I enjoy corn back home, but here the taste is not the same ( maybe my wife's cooking )

But I do agree about the pick ups

I've never seen many farmers driving old trucks

[bokningar]

4 hours ago, MaiChai said:

It seems other countries can produce and send it to Thailand cheaper than Thai farmers can produce? They probably need to understand why this is possible and try and compete? I must admit i am surprised at the cost of some things in Thailand; especially produced or grown in Thailand products.

Price of production is not the only thing to factor in.

US alone subsidies farmers US$ 20 billion a year, that my friend is a sh...load of THB

The same situation all over the world.

Not sure I would like t know food prices if a subsidies was taken away, but it would for sure make room for same tax cuts.

Or at least to stop governments spending money the have to loan. 

[RichardColeman]

Imagine if ALL countries banned cheaper imported goods !

[fruitman]

2 hours ago, bark said:

Eat corn beard for 30 baht, for half loaf. Buy a bag of sunflower seeds for 10 baht, and 2 beer at 30 baht each =100 baht.

Now I got you think ! Beer and bread, wow, I can eat and get drunk.

 

Beer for 30 baht? I think of free headache sir, my beer costs 140 baht a bottle in Thailand...if they only learned to produce good beer i would start drinking it again.

 

Also i don't understand who eats that bread from the 711 or supermarkets. For me that ain't bread, it's all air.

 

Many Thai have digestion issues, (can't shit well) from eating too much white rice. They should grow something with more fibre like wheat (woo-wee). 

 

But ANY article about the farmers ends-up the same way: lack of education, stupidity, doing what they always do and the government is to blame for everything. They have much bare land in Thailand, plenty of sun, enough water, cheap labour but still can't compete on the worldmarkets.

[elgordo38]

6 hours ago, MaiChai said:

It seems other countries can produce and send it to Thailand cheaper than Thai farmers can produce? They probably need to understand why this is possible and try and compete? I must admit i am surprised at the cost of some things in Thailand; especially produced or grown in Thailand products.

Yes I am surprised to by the rise to the upside in prices. Rice farmers are in the same category as us ordinary folk who are constantly shafted by huge conglomerates that produce 99% of what we buy and consume. These mega billion dollar deals are becoming a daily occurrence while the government sits back on its hands and does little to protect us. The day of the small farm like small businesses world wide is just about over the big mega farms/businesses are taking over. They are the biggest polluters as well but governments overlook this.

[connda]

Best of luck to the farmers, however, maize is not a substitute for wheat in any recipe requiring wheat flour, and considering Thailand has a pretty good commercial baking industry, I'm thinking there will be plenty of push-back on this call for government interference in wheat imports. But sure, you can make corn meal bakery products if you can convince people to eat them.  Like, I like corn bread, but I like a whole wheat baguette a whole lot better.  It just doesn't taste the same.   Many some entrepreneurial Thais can turn the whole country on to Mexican food, then suddenly there will be a market for corn tortillas.  Mexi-Thai! 

Edited October 31, 2016 by connda

[Grubster]

10 hours ago, MaiChai said:

It seems other countries can produce and send it to Thailand cheaper than Thai farmers can produce? They probably need to understand why this is possible and try and compete? I must admit i am surprised at the cost of some things in Thailand; especially produced or grown in Thailand products.

Maybe these foreign crops are subsidized you think.

[bokningar]

Maybe Garlic would be something, world market prices I really high right now. 

Up from 5000 US $ per ton to 8000 US$ in Europe and US fort top quality.

Chines is by far the largest exporter today.

 

And to previous post, farm product's is subsidized all over the world.

It is a sick market that taxpayer spend a lot of money on.  

[RKASA]

You can't make anything good from corn flour like they make it here (it just corn starch) - make corn meal  - I have been looking for it forever here - some cornflour (starch) can be used to turn general flour into cake flour by adding some corn flour (starch), but you can't make any kind of real corn bread from any product available here - I would eat corn bread everyday if I could find corn meal.  Learn to mill it into something other then one useless product for export.  You can't make money exporting corn product to the US - the amount of corn grown there is already high - why should I have to send off for corn meal if I live in Thailand and my house (and I am not kidding) is surrounded by corn fields.

[fruitman]

4 hours ago, connda said:

Many some entrepreneurial Thais can turn the whole country on to Mexican food, then suddenly there will be a market for corn tortillas.  Mexi-Thai! 

 

I like mexican food with the tortilla's but burrito's should be made from wheat for me. The farmers could produce tortilla's since they are extreme expensive in the supermarkets. But thinking a step further is not Thai, it's easyier to complain, cry and ask for importbans.

[kickstart]

12 hours ago, BuaBS said:

Forgot another one :

If farmers only get 3-4 B/kg for corn , why are cornflakes twice the price of europe ?

Middlemen .

Cheaper corn + cheaper factories (labour)  in Thailand = twice as expensive as expensive West.

Corn flakes, as in what you get from 7-11 are imported  ,so they is a100% import  tax ,hence twice the price .

Can not se a company like Kellogg's  setting up a factory in Thailand .

Ps.  Can the Nation multimedia  do they  home work  before  publishing anything ,the price of maize the farmers get is now  about 4-4.30 baht/kg ,and has been for a long time ,a lot is due to  imports maize  from  Cambodia , as well as imported wheat .

[BuaBS]

11 minutes ago, kickstart said:

Corn flakes, as in what you get from 7-11 are imported  ,so they is a100% import  tax ,hence twice the price .

Can not se a company like Kellogg's  setting up a factory in Thailand .

I'm not even talking about brand names , but generic cornflakes like they sell in Aldi like supermarkets . Big C has some unknown brands too , but still ridiculously expensive , probably imported too ? It would be very possible  setting up a factory in Thailand to make cornflakes & tortilla chips . Potato chips again are too expensive ,partly because potato's are expensive here , but cheap corn tortilla chips could be an alternative.

[adhd]

maize comes from corn

but thai people want to stop wheat?