The Thai government is working on boosting productivity of rice farmers while cutting cost of their production, Agriculture Minister Theera Wongsamut said on Thursday.
Theera said though Thailand is the world's largest rice exporter, its farmers remain poor with most of them in heavy debts.
He added that while the average age of farmers is in their 50s, few young people, including children of current farmers, wanted to get into the occupation.
"If farmers have no security in their occupation, our nation will have no security in food," Theera said at a major national rice research conference at the state Kasetsart University.
In order to improve the livelihood of farmers, he said the government needed to raise their skills and knowledge.
Chairit Damrongkiat, deputy director general of Agriculture Ministry's Rice Department, told Xinhua that the ministry is spending 128 million baht (4.27 million U.S. dollars) to strengthen some of the existing community rice centers.
He said these centers, run by rice farmers themselves, would teach the farmers how to cut their cost of rice growing, use machinery in their plantations and make products from rice that would earn them higher income.
Pilot projects are being carried out in five provinces in key rice-growing plains in the northeast and central regions, Chairit said. He said these five centers would expand by setting up their networks of farmer groups.
On cutting production cost, Chairit said Thai farmers currently needed 30-40 kilograms of rice seeds per one rai (1,600 square meters) of their growing, and this should be cut to 15-20 kilograms.
He said currently it cost 3,500-4,500 baht (116-150 U.S. dollars) for Thai farmers to grow one rai of rice paddy while they earned 4,000-7,000 baht (133-233 dollars) per rai.
Theera said the vast majority of Thai farmers lived under the poverty line and at the current rate of their productivity, each farmer household would need to grow 35-40 rais of rice, while their average possession was only at 15 rais.
Source : People's Daily Onlin
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