Thread: Rice farmers to protest against government

Originally Posted by DrB0b

What's the deal with all this old rice nonsense anyway? We're talking about recent harvests. I doubt there's any Thai rice left in a warehouse in the country. It's all Lao and Khmer 5th rate crap as the good Thai stuff has already been sold out the back door.

Yes what's the deal, ASEAN has been soft-started.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Caretaker Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong on Friday floated the idea of selling "rice bonds" to the general public, since banks and big investors aren't interested in helping.

isn't the public paying already with their taxes those subsidies ?

they are getting desperate,

Originally Posted by S Landreth

He repeated the claim that if protesters had not obstructed the efforts of the government over the past two months, all of the payments would have been made.

they are really taking them for fools, which they are btw, but when done in public, it's unrespectful and unacceptable

see what happens Dr when you omit one of these :

FWIW, In the north, when the rice is harvested a percentage is keep for family use.
This is stored in an area to protect it from moisture, to stop the humidity affecting the rice the store room is sealed, they use kii kwaai- buffalo shit to seal any opening
The idea there is to stop air movement around the rice. This keeps the rice for at least that year after a year it becomes hard and the taste is different.

Not a technical answer but its what has happened for years.
The stored rice is hulled.

Originally Posted by Mid

see what happens Dr when you omit one of these :

Yeah, I believe Jonathan Swift had the same problem. That's why he sold out to Disney in the end.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Caretaker Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong on Friday floated the idea of selling "rice bonds" to the general public,

this cnut is divorced from reality

the poor farmers cannot buy the bonds - they have no money

the middle class will not buy the bonds as they are protesting right now against their taxes being used on this rice scam

Originally Posted by S Landreth

However, the farmers promised to return and to rally at the international airport if they do not get paid next week as promised

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Mr Kittiratt said officials were now preparing details of a bond issue, including consideration on an attractive interest rate. A final decision is expected within seven to eight weeks, he added.

Am I missing something?

Originally Posted by S Landreth

It is not clear what kind of promise Mr Chada extracted from Ms Yingluck. He is angry with the Pheu Thai Party after it ran a candidate against him in the Feb 2 election, which he ended up losing.

We'll buy your party and give you a minister post after next election.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

It will be interesting to see what interest rate they put on the bonds (to attract individual investors) and who’s going to back them.

The bonds would be backed by the ministry, and would have a maturity of either six months or one year with a coupon of around 2.75 to 3.0 percent.

Yahoo News UK & Ireland - Latest World News & UK News Headlines

article posted upthread .

Originally Posted by roger77

FWIW, In the north, when the rice is harvested a percentage is keep for family use.
This is stored in an area to protect it from moisture, to stop the humidity affecting the rice the store room is sealed, they use kii kwaai- buffalo shit to seal any opening
The idea there is to stop air movement around the rice. This keeps the rice for at least that year after a year it becomes hard and the taste is different.

Not a technical answer but its what has happened for years.
The stored rice is hulled.

In Thailand (bagged and stored under a roof) rice has a quality life of 2 years.
Semi exposed like in the great wall photo, obviously less.

industrialized countries, i.e. Japan and Oz use climate controlled silos and can store for 10 years before noticeable degradation.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Somebody is making him some promises.

Can't afford to lose votes in the central plains. CTP populists, not reliable partner.
Can't upset them. Must send government representative to negotiate.

One can not blame these rich farmers from taking advantage of the situation

Commerce Ministry notes rice stockpiles are up to standard.
Supaporn Carusarnpisit

BANGKOK, 22 February 2014, (NNT) -- The Deputy Commerce Minister, Yanyong Phuangrach, has disclosed that the government is planning to auction off more than 500,000 tons of rice in the stockpiles in addition to the 200,000 tons to be auctioned via the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand (AFET) next week. More than one million tons of rice is expected to be sold monthly from February onwards.

Mr. Yanyong has inspected rice stockpiles under the rice-pledging scheme at two rice mills in Nakhon Chai Si district of Nakhon Pathom province. Next week AFET will hold an auction of 200,000 tons of 2013/2014 white rice and jasmine rice in order to pay farmers in the program.

He is confident that from February onwards, no less than one million tons of rice will be sold every month, equivalent to around 10 billion baht revenue to be submitted to the Finance Ministry monthly.

However, the government would not be able to purchase this season’s double-cropping rice under the rice-pledging scheme, even though it was planning to do so after the last day of pledging for in-season rice on February 28.

In the current circumstance, double-cropping rice farmers would have to wait for the new government to join the program. The current government would have to find alternative methods to assist farmers, such as establishing funds for farmers via the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).

thainews.prd.go.th

Some help for the farmers

คอนเสิร์ตโจก้องช่วยชาวนาทะลุ 3.6 ล้านบาท

Concert Joe & Kong raised 3.6 million to help farmers

มีวัตถุประสงค์เพื่อช่วยเหลือครอบครัวชาวนาที่อัตวิบ ากกรรม 11 ครอบครัว และเพื่อช่วยเหลือครัวชาวนาที่เข้ามาในกรุงเทพ เน้นช่วยเหลือค่าอาหาร ค่าเดินทาง

The purpose of this concert was to help the 11 families of the farmers who committed suicide and to help the farmers who travel to Bangkok for food and transport

Originally Posted by Mid

Commerce Ministry notes rice stockpiles are up to standard.
Supaporn Carusarnpisit

BANGKOK, 22 February 2014, (NNT) -- The Deputy Commerce Minister, Yanyong Phuangrach, has disclosed that the government is planning to auction off more than 500,000 tons of rice in the stockpiles in addition to the 200,000 tons to be auctioned via the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand (AFET) next week. More than one million tons of rice is expected to be sold monthly from February onwards.

Mr. Yanyong has inspected rice stockpiles under the rice-pledging scheme at two rice mills in Nakhon Chai Si district of Nakhon Pathom province. Next week AFET will hold an auction of 200,000 tons of 2013/2014 white rice and jasmine rice in order to pay farmers in the program.

He is confident that from February onwards, no less than one million tons of rice will be sold every month, equivalent to around 10 billion baht revenue to be submitted to the Finance Ministry monthly.

However, the government would not be able to purchase this season’s double-cropping rice under the rice-pledging scheme, even though it was planning to do so after the last day of pledging for in-season rice on February 28.

In the current circumstance, double-cropping rice farmers would have to wait for the new government to join the program. The current government would have to find alternative methods to assist farmers, such as establishing funds for farmers via the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).

thainews.prd.go.th

Another piece of nonsense from PT imo. Stalling the farmers wrath with more pledges of rice marketing.

If the pledging system was going under last year why wait until now to try to resolve the matter? It's a buggers muddle, the country is clearly in the bankrupt zone under the auspices of the Shinawatra family. It's just a shame they didn't throw as much enthusiasm into caring for the people as they did their own interests.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

The purpose of this concert was to help the 11 families of the farmers who committed suicide and to help the farmers who travel to Bangkok for food and transport

We keep hearing this stuff about 11 farmers committing suicide. But correlation is not caausation. I don't want to sound unsympathetic but to determine if they committed suicide because of the rice pledging scheme - not because of the many causes of misery that can occur in a life -we would need to know what number of rice farmers commit suicide on average. There must be a few million rice farmers in thailand, right? Some of them will commit suiicide.

Originally Posted by Mr Lick

It's a buggers muddle, the country is clearly in the bankrupt zone

Nah- far from it. Thai gov't debt is way below the industrialised world average. But I would like to know the actual (or paper) losses on this debacle.

Rice farmers will protest in large number again, destination not revealed
Suwit Rattiwan

BANGKOK, 23 February 2014 (NNT) – Another mass rally by the farmer protesters at the Ministry of Commerce has been set on 25 February 2014 to demand answers from the government about long-overdue rice payments.

Coordinator of the Farmers’ Network Natthawat Chanin-ngam said the farmer protesters would rally en masse again this Tuesday to press the government on payments in the rice pledging scheme after the government promised that it would spend four billion baht/week to pay them. Mr Natthawut however declined to disclose where the protesters would travel to, saying that they would meet on Monday to plan their movements.

Civil servants who worked at the Ministry of Commerce were allowed to enter their office on Monday but they were prohibited from bringing a personal car to the ministry, said the coordinator.

The protesters have surrounded the Ministry of Commerce in Nonthaburi province since 19 February this year to protest against the government who owes them payments worth 130 billion baht in total.

thainews.prd.go.th

Those with 'hidden agendas' warned not to take advantage of suffering farmers

Farmers, academicians and rice traders have called on all parties, especially politicians, not to play games with farmers, as they have been suffering from delayed payments for rice pledged to the government under the subsidy project.

The farmers should be encouraged to call for their payments as soon as possible, they say.

Thousands of farmers travelling to the capital on about 600 tractors in a long convoy on Friday decided to return to their homes in the Central region, including Uthai Thani, Ayutthaya, Sing Buri and Ang Thong, even though they were more than halfway to Bangkok. They had started their convoy on Wednesday.

Former Chart Thai Pattana MP Chada Thaiset, who represents Uthai Thani farmers and also proclaimed himself as a convoy leader, reportedly told the farmers to head back home.

Chada told them that the government had promised to pay what it owed them after conferring with caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her team of ministers, one farmer said, adding that the convoy would be resumed if the farmers did not receive their payments within a week.

However, some of the farmers disagreed with Chada and wanted to carry on with their plan to travel to Bangkok, and perhaps join other farmers already protesting in the Commerce Ministry compound, which has been besieged for almost a month.

An observer of a farmers' protest rally in Bang Pa-in, Ayutthaya, said some security guards who claimed to be part of Chada's security team persuaded the farmers to go back home. The guards also forbade some farmers not to go ahead to Bangkok, this person said.

The question of why some farmers who wanted to go ahead to Bangkok could not do so remains unanswered, raising another question of whether there is any hidden agenda behind this matter.

"There is political intervention in the farmers' fate," said Aat Pisanwanich, director of the Centre for International Trade Studies.

He said several groups of farmers that have tried to gather to protest against the government, demanding their overdue payments for pledged rice, needed a leader. But any assistance by those who have got involved with the protesting farmers was seen as just pretence.

"The cash-strapped rice growers are critically depressed. Politicians and other people should not fool around with them, as they have been hit hard. They just want to get their money to live their lives. Any help given them should be frank and with no conflict of interest," Aat said.

Rawee Rungrueng, leader of the Network of Thai Farmers, which demonstrated at the Commerce Ministry, said his group of farmers had decided not to join the rice growers' protest rally in Ayutthaya because there might be intervention by some groups.

Currently there are more than 900,000 farmers waiting for overdue payments totalling Bt110 billion.

What ties all the groups of protesting farmers together is the call for what they are owed by the government. But each group has a different agenda depending on its needs.

Kriengsak Tapnanont, secretary-general of the Thai Rice Millers Association, said Chada might just have wanted to show his responsibility to Uthai Thani farmers, so he led the group of demonstrators.

Kriengsak said farmers could easily be tricked, as they need leadership as well as some funds to help them live when they eventually do reach Bangkok.

Buaklai Resniyom, a farmer from Kanchanaburi who joined the protest at the ministry, said she had to leave her family behind as she just wanted to get the money owed for her pledged rice.

"Many farmers are confused about whom they should believe, as their 'helpers' may come with some hidden [agenda]," she said.

She said she might return home empty-handed if the government fails to pay her off.

Originally Posted by tomta

Originally Posted by S Landreth

The purpose of this concert was to help the 11 families of the farmers who committed suicide and to help the farmers who travel to Bangkok for food and transport

We keep hearing this stuff about 11 farmers committing suicide. But correlation is not caausation. I don't want to sound unsympathetic but to determine if they committed suicide because of the rice pledging scheme - not because of the many causes of misery that can occur in a life -we would need to know what number of rice farmers commit suicide on average. There must be a few million rice farmers in thailand, right? Some of them will commit suiicide.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic

you failed. miserably

The view from China, pretty decent article-

Thai rice farmers pay heavy price for politics


The election for the House of Representatives of Thailand ended in protests and obstructions of the oppositions earlier this month. It is no surprise that following a public boycott by the Democrat Party, the election was stranded, sending Thailand's political situation one move closer to a complete stalemate.

The election committee has decided to set makeup voting to be held in April, which means there will still be unrest before the next Thai leadership steps into office. This will bring many aspects of Thai business life to a complete standstill for a few months.

Since November, the growing tensions in Thailand have severely corroded the social and economic development of the country. Tourism, the pillar industry of the Thai economy, has incurred great losses, and consumer confidence and private investments have also been struck.

More devastatingly, the political turbulence has inflicted a heavy blow on Thai rice farmers. Unable to continue to assume its responsibility for the rice subsidy scheme, the government of Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has pushed many rice farmers to bankruptcy.

Now those farmers, already barely able to make ends meet, are swarming into streets to protest, pushing the Yingluck government into an even worse crisis.

Since 2011, controversies in Thailand about the rice subsidy scheme have become ever tenser, especially when the international grain prices are declining. Financial losses are expanding because of the scheme, and the middle-class is highly opposed to it.

Opposition from the middle class is a powerful driver of the ongoing political crisis. The opposition in Thailand attributes the current hardship that Thai rice farms are enduring to the failure of the rice subsidy scheme, demanding Yingluck resign.

Although the subsidy scheme has shortcomings, it is a reasonable pick, in the short term, out of several bad options.

As a middle-income country, Thailand is trapped by the enlarging gap between its urban and rural development, between the rich and the poor, and among different places.

Rural development should be the top priority on the government's agenda, in order to avoid the country getting old before it gets rich and to escape of the daunting middle-income trap.

But the, rice subsidy scheme does not deserve to be a long-term plan, and is certainly not the optimal option. After the long-standing political crisis, the strength of the Thai government has become much weaker, which means it is becoming less able to carry out the policies which require long-term and strong execution.

In the short term, the rice subsidy scheme is conducive to relieving the shortage of financial support in rural areas, and can provide a necessary shield to rice farmers when international grain prices fluctuate. Generally speaking, the benefits it can produce outweigh the trouble it makes.

However, keeping the scheme will be costly. Since the plan is operated by pro-Thaksin forces, the cost will unfortunately be transferred to the middle-income groups with vested interests, which will trigger bigger resistance from the opposition.

The ineffectiveness of the rice subsidy scheme, which has ultimately harmed the interests of rice farmers, should be pinned on the much weakened power of the Thai government due to deteriorating political impasse.

The never-receding clashes between anti-Thaksin and pro-Thaksin forces have cost the country any sense of unity and order. There are tug of wars in almost every phase of policy execution, and even the reciprocal "rice for high-speed rail" project between China and Thailand has fallen victim to these battles.

Unless all parties could reach a compromise to rebuild the authority of the Thai government on the basis of a new political consensus, Thailand will pay a heavy price for its domestic political chaos.

And Thai farmers, who are less capable of fending off risks, will foot the entire bill of the political crisis and become the most miserable victims of this clash.
Thai rice farmers pay heavy price for politics - Asian Review - Globaltimes.cn

I wouldn't balk at the irony of a Thaksin gov being reinstalled, only for the people who put them in place, the rurals, to bring it down by shutting every major city and thoroughfare peacefully, with tractors and other hardware.

Pheu Thai to ask NACC to probe Abhisit over rice price-guaranteeing scheme Tuesday
February 24, 2014

Pheu Thai spokesman Prompong Nopparit said Monday that he would file a complaint with the National Anti-Corruption Commission seeking a probe against former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva over the rice price-guaranteeing scheme.

Prompong said the scheme implemented by the Abhisit government cause damage worth Bt166 billion.

He said the Office of the Auditor General warned the Abhisit government on November 15 2010 of possible corruption in the price-guaranteeing scheme. Prompong alleged that the number of farmers under the scheme was exaggerated to siphon the money.

Prompong said the Pheu Thai asked the NACC to probe the scheme in 2011 but the NACC declined to proceed with the investigation.

He said he would ask the NACC again at 1 pm Tuesday to probe Abhisit over the scheme.

nationmultimedia.com