Netizens ready to extend helping hand to suffering rice farmers

Social media is becoming a channel through which farmers can directly sell their rice to consumers for higher prices than to rice mills or middlemen. Some public and private organisations have offered free space for farmers to sell their products. 
There was a period of confusion after a lawyer posted that direct sales by farmers could be in breach of the law. The government, however, quickly squashed the speculation.
On Twitter, @P_WJ wrote: “This should be the end of rice mills. Farmers should grow rice and join hands to mill and sell the rice by themselves. Consumers can get rice at a cheaper price.”
Pradit Ph wrote on Facebook: “Rice [paddy] is cheap, but take-away or dine-in meals and packaged rice in super markets are not cheap. What a crazy market mechanism! If any farmer wants to sell rice to you at a low price, please give him more money.”
Online news agency The Momemtum shared its scoop on the success story of Japanese farmers. 
Panachit Kittipanya-ngam shared Biz Story’s pictures demonstrating the importance of value-added rice packaging.
Chanon Nanuan, the son of farmers, posted: “This is the third year that my mum sold rice seeds for Bt20 per kilogram (to get this high price, it must have passed the test by research centre.) We don’t need to depend on any rice-pledging scheme....
“To sell good quality rice, we have to take very good care of the rice. We also sell our rice via cooperatives. If we didn’t come together, I don’t think the value of our rice would be this high...We were used to depending on the government. From now on, we have to depend on ourselves so we can survive and it will be sustainable. It takes time,” he wrote.
Many voiced concern over the global market, the higher costs and the lower productivity of Thai rice farms and the populist policies that resulted in the cultivation of lower quality rice as some farmers just grew quick-yield rice to get money from the government’s scheme.
@ArmmyTT wrote: “The rice pledging or compensation policies of governments have reduced the motivation of farmers to grow organic rice, as the process is difficult and they will fetch around the same price as what they will get from those policies.”
@BeeverBSN: “People are pouring their help to the farmers. But this is just for the short term in an emergency period. We have to see the government’s competence in the long run.”
@chetmaitree: “If [farmers] do not improve themselves, they will be fooled all the time.”
@iVaderer: “I talked to my friend whose parents are rice farmers. A major cost is the harvest labour wage. In some years, the wage is higher than the minimum wage.”
One joke being shared via Line compares the supermarket price of 5-kilogram milled rice at Bt82 and 3kg of dog food that costs Bt209. “We are right to have chosen to eat rice. It is cheaper than dog food.” 
Amid the debates about the measures and policies on Thai rice, some social media users still shared stories of HM King Bhumibol and his farm lab within the Chitralada Palace compound, to develop breeds of Thai rice, and to ensure Thais will have enough rice as their food in the long run.