Ministry report to call on govt to increase farmer incomes

The Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry will put a new package before the Cabinet later this month to help farmers boost their income, according to Deputy Minister Luck Wajananawat. 
The ministry will ask for the budget to support the measures.
The package is expected to focus on ways to boost farmer incomes and develop additional income sources for them.
The move is aimed to backstop incomes to prevent future declines and allow them to continue farming. The package will first be introduced for rubฌber planters.
The deputy minister added that after his recent office taking, many in the agricultural sector came to meet him to complain about their difficulties arising from volatile product prices.
Rubber planters, for example, comฌplained that tapping rubber trees alone had proved inadequate for them to make ends meet. Luck said that it therefore falls on the ministry to seek ways to boost their incomes. 
He admitted that despite the government launching measures to shore up prices, they had in fact fallen for many farm products, including pork, eggs, pineapples and rubber.
Luck said that the committees in charge of farm products would have to convene more frequently to solve these ongoing problems and seek ways to sustain farm product prices.
He predicted that a group repreฌsenting pig farmers would be seeking his help in response to the falling price of pork. The ministry would devise measฌures to address each type of agricultural product.
Last week deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak asked the Agricultural Ministry and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) to jointly reform the agricultural sector in order to boost product prices. The BAAC should consider further lowering the interest for lowincome farmers, suggested Somkid.
Both parties should also join forces to shore up the rubber price, he suggested. Somkid wants to see the rubber price raised to over Bt50 per kilogram.