Ministry outlines measures to boost competitiveness of agriculutural goods

Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Chalermchai Sreeon said on Wednesday (January 1) that the five measures were: agricultural logistics development, product development to increase product value, smart agriculture promotion, agricultural machinery development, and online trading management to increase market channels.
“These measures aim to reduce the production cost and increase the production capacity by applying technologies to increase product value and market channels,” he said.
“The agricultural technology promotion and agricultural logistics development committees are important mechanisms to drive these measures, with the cooperation of government agencies, the private sector, academics and farmers.”
He further explained that the National Agriculture Big Data Centre will be a central information database which farmers and private sectors can access via “Digital Farmer” application on smartphone and computer platform.
“Twenty-two departments under the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry will all provide online services from January 1,” he said.
“Moreover, we will establish the Agritech and Innovation Centre in 77 provinces within this year. This move will reform the country’s agriculture at the structural and system-level to deal with the baht appreciation and the fluctuation of the global economy,” Chalermchai said.
Meanwhile, the adviser to the Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister, Alongkorn Ponlaboot, added that in 2020, the prolonged appreciation of baht is most worrisome, because it affects the country’s competitiveness, especially the export of low-margin agricultural products and foods.
“Tackling the baht appreciation issue is not easy and it cannot be resolved immediately, so we have to use parallel strategies to maintain the export value of agricultural products and foods worth more than Bt1 trillion per year,” he added.