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Tag: farmers

  • Thai farmers receive government loans to stabilize market prices

    Thai farmers receive government loans to stabilize market prices

    Thailand is the world’s second largest rice exporter, and it is confronted by a fall in prices that has mostly affected the rice farmers, with prices hitting a thirteen months low. Now the Thai Government has taken action and has proposed a set of measures with would help alleviate the pressure from the country’s rice farmers.

    According to Thailand’s Minister of Commerce Apiradee Tantraporn, rice farmers will receive 10,500 baht, or 299 US dollars, for every tonne of white paddy stored. The measure is aimed at all Thai farmers, with those who store Thai Pathum Thani fragrant rice to receive 11,300 baht, that is 322 US dollars, per tonne.

    “The overall budget is set at 18 billion baht ($514 million). This is to help relieve grievances farmers are facing while the main crop is being harvested,” Mrs. Apiradee Tantraporn told journalists.

    Last week, the government announced it would offer loans worth 1,3 billion US dollars to jasmine rice farmers, if they store the grain for at least six months to slow down market supply.

    Another measure the government has taken is easier access to open rice paddy markets. Mrs. Tantraporn said this is in order to boost competition among rice farmers and for their benefit, in the middle of this period’s price depression. According to state officials, in the province of Udon Thani’s retail centres and PTT gas stations, markets will be opened in the next weeks. Here the farmers will be allowed to sell their rice and negotiate the prices directly with the buyers, circumventing the need for intermediaries.

    Action is also taken in Lopburi and Sukhothai, where the government and other agencies have joined forces in order to promote and allow farmers to sell their rice directly. In Sukhothai, milled rice was on sale at up to 40% discount prices, while in Lopburi, the Si Sa Ket police was put together a market for farmers to sell the rice to their families and police staff.

    In total, there will be no less than  109 open markets organised in 44 provinces, all with the sole purpose to to help farmers sell rice paddy directly to consumers.

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  • Indonesia Desperately Needs Young Farmers

    Indonesia Desperately Needs Young Farmers

    Oxfam Indonesia’s economic justice program director Dini Widiastuti said that the number of households working in the agriculture sector decreased by 5 million in the period of 2003-2013.

    “The decreasing number of farmers will have impacts on the domestic food availability,” Dini said in Jakarta on Thursday, August 11, 2016.

    Dini added that another issue faced by the country was related to farmers’ age and productivity. Data collected during the 2013 agriculture census revealed that the farmers’ age structure was dominated by elderly with low education levels. The data showed that 60.8 percent of farmers were above 45 years old, and 73.97 percent of them were elementary school graduates with poor access to technology.

    The data was in line with the Agribusiness Cost Structure Survey (SOUT) results for food crops in 2016. The survey revealed that the majority of food crops farmers (96.45 percent) were above 30 years.

    The People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty (KRKP) released a report in 2016 that showed an alarming finding that 50 percent of rice farmers and 73 percent of horticulture farmers would not want their children to follow their steps. Children of the farmers also expressed their reluctance to be farmers.

    “Young generation’s lack of interest in the agriculture sector was caused by a perception that being farmers is not rewarding,” AgriProFocus Indonesia’s Country Network Coordinator Tina Napitupulu said.

    Such a condition had caused a significant drop in the number of workers in the agriculture sector by 3.15 million people in the period of 2010-2014.

    KRPK coordinator Said Abdullah revealed that 65 percent of current farmers were above 45 years old. Said admitted that there was insufficient access to agriculture information for young generations.

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  • Thailand’s farmers left high and dry

    Thailand’s farmers left high and dry

    One would not think it from the holiday bustle in Bangkok’s glittering shopping malls, but the rest of Thailand is bracing itself for a lean year.

    A rainfall deficit has left a series of reservoirs that are crucial sources of Thailand’s dry-season water at between a third and half of their capacities.

    Experts say the capital itself may run short of tap water.

    The countryside is already suffering as many people need water for their livelihoods. And the pinch is being felt more widely as spending shrinks because there is no cash available.

    Big C, Thailand’s second-biggest hypermart chain and a major retailer in smaller towns, saw total third-quarter revenues decrease by 4.6 per cent over the same period last year.

    Early last month, Siam Commercial Bank said disappointing retail industry figures were a “reality check” and that “consumers, particularly low-income consumers, have been under fiscal strain”.

    Big C’s revenue decrease was “driven by a retail sales decline”, wrote Ms Warunee Kitjaroenpoonsin, director of corporate affairs at Big C Supercenter PCL, in an e-mail. “The third quarter was also impacted by slow private consumption, high household debt levels and a slow global economic recovery.”

    Rural Thailand accounts for half of the population. From rubber to rice, embattled farmers are facing a perfect storm of water shortage, low commodity prices and an economy which, hit by domestic political uncertainty, is forecast to grow just 2.9 per cent this year.

    Thailand’s ratio of household debt to gross domestic product, at 84.2 per cent last year, was 45 per cent higher than in 2003.

    The National Economic and Social Development Board believes the figure may reach 87 to 88 per cent by the end of this year.

    The farmers are the deepest in debt. It is also the poorest farmers who have the highest debt, said Dr Nipon Poapongsakorn, a distinguished fellow of the Thailand Development Research Institute Foundation.

    “Most of the debt is from the formal sector – buying of fridges and television sets on instalment, for instance,” he explained.

    “The government has had several loan schemes so they (the farmers) are heavily indebted. And the 20 per cent poorest farm households owe 124 per cent of their income.”

    The ongoing El Nino-induced rainfall deficit and drought projected to continue into next summer will reinforce the problem of ballooning household debt, which analysts have been warning of for some years, said Dr Nipon.

    Thailand’s farmers must rely on non-farm income – trading or odd jobs or remittances from working members of the family, perhaps in Bangkok – to meet their debts.

    As much as 60 per cent of the average rural family’s income is from non-farm sources, Dr Nipon said. While that has helped, it has made the farmers vulnerable to slowdowns in the larger economy – which is what is happening now.

    Ms Meena Chaimongkol, a 46-year-old single mother, owns 2.5ha of land in Huay Khaokam, a village near Phayao in the lower north that is part of the 22 provinces affected by the water deficit.

    She said she has lost 70 per cent of the family’s padi crop this year because of erratic water supply.

    She has resorted to going to Bangkok once a month to buy used clothes to mend and sell locally. But that exposes her to an economy that is not doing much better.

    “Most farmers are able to pay debt from non-farm income,” Dr Nipon said. “But then, when the economy slows down, they have no money.”

  • Balinese farmers insure 4,000 hectares of rice fields

    Balinese farmers insure 4,000 hectares of rice fields

    As many as 4,000 hectares of rice fields belonging to Balinese farmers are included in the rice farming insurance program for the planting period of October 2015-March 2016, an official has said.

    “Our previous target this year is 11 thousand hectares of rice fields, but only 4,000 hectares can be insured due to limited time,” Head of Bali Provincial Agriculture and Foodstuffs affairs office Ida Bagus Wisnuardhana said here on Sunday.

    Thus, if the crop failure occurs due to floods or pest attacks after the rice fields have been insured, the farmer can get the claim of Rp6 million per hectare, he stated.

    In addition, the farmers should not pay the entire premium because 80 percent of it is subsidized through the state budget. The amount of the premium per hectare is Rp 180 thousand, but 80 percent (Rp144 thousand per hectare) is covered through the state budget.

    “Thus, the farmer concerned only has to pay Rp36 thousand per hectare in every planting season,” Wisnuardhana pointed out.