Rice farmers need to adapt to become sustainable in the long term: PM

“Why do you still want to grow a lot of rice paddy when there would be losses [resulting from doing that]?” the premier quipped during a meeting with Suthep Kongmak, president of the Thai rice growers’ association.
Prayut said every stakeholder had to grasp the situation in regard to the country’s rice production properly, so that problems can be resolved effectively. The government needed to implement both short- and long-term measures to help farmers hit by the slump in prices, which have plunged to a 10-year low.
The prevailing market price is now only Bt6,000 to Bt7,000 per tonne, which is less than the average cost of production.
Suthep yesterday led a group of association members to thank the government for moves to intervene in the market to shore up prices. 
The prime minister said the programmes announced recently, worth nearly Bt60 billion, were aimed at helping farmers to keep their crop in barns for household consumption, as well as delaying the sales of their paddy until market prices rise again.
Speaking on behalf of rice farmers and millers around the country, Suthep said his group was satisfied with the Cabinet’s solution to boost the plunging price of Hom Mali paddy. But he also urged the government to expand assistance schemes for farmers in regions outside the North and the Northeast.

‘Make farmers stronger’ 
After, Prayut said: “We intend to solve farmers’ problems at their root cause. Many factors are involved such as rice quality, floods and drought, high production costs, so we need to help farmers adapt to changes, so that they are stronger. We’ve implemented urgent measures and will provide funding to lower the costs of production. After all, we’re not telling farmers to stop growing rice, but they have to adapt to the new conditions.
“In the end, government assistance programmes alone do not solve the problems at their root cause, so we have to implement longer-term measures to make farmers stronger, even though it will take another 10 to 20 years for these measures to bear fruit,” he said.
On water resources, Prayut, who is scheduled to visit Pathum Thani this Friday to observe water management for consumption and agricultural purposes, said: “The problem is water is still not accessible by all sectors, especially the agricultural sector, as not all areas have an irrigation system.”
Meanwhile, Justice Minsiter Paiboon Koomchaya said more than 6,000 individuals would face investigation into their roles in the massive financial losses stemming from the previous government’s rice-pledging scheme. Some of these individuals, including former ministers, bureaucrats, and executives of private companies, could face civil liability lawsuits, like the one former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been hit with.
The government is seeking Bt30 billion in compensation from Yingluck for negligence in her official oversight of the scheme for allegedly ignoring warnings of rampant graft in the scheme, which cost the state over Bt500 billion over two to three years.