Thailand’s top political parties are wooing more than 14 million farmers, the single-largest group of voters, with promises such as suspending crop loans and measures to triple their income in four years.
The Pheu Thai Party has deep roots among Thailand’s rural and farm community, and is leading in pre-poll surveys.
It plans to halt payment of interest and principal on farm loans for three years if it wins the May 14 general election. The debt freeze would allow 7.4 million agricultural households to save money for fresh investment, the party said.
Photo: AFP
It promised to transfer ownership of about 8 million hectares to debt-ridden farmers, which would give them access to credit by using the land as collateral.
The Move Forward Party is also gaining in surveys, and has vowed to confer land titles for about 6.4 million hectares.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s United Thai Nation Party said it would set up a fund to support agriculture product prices, while Thai Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s Bhumjaithai Party, which has gained in popularity with its successful push to liberalize cannabis and is promoting it as a cash crop, is pledging to guarantee crop prices.
Thailand’s farming heartland in the north and northeast have become key battlegrounds, as they can influence the election’s outcome in about 175 seats in the 500-member Thai House of Representatives.
How political parties deal with the issue has ramifications for global food security and inflation, with the country being a major supplier of rice, sugar and rubber to the global market.
While the Thai government spends about 150 billion baht (US$4.4 million) annually to support crop prices, insurance and other benefits for farmers, slumping prices of rice, rubber, sugar and palm oil over the years amid rising fertilizer and pesticide costs have pushed it deeper into debt.
Previous efforts by parties to improve the lot of farmers have yielded mixed results. A policy to purchase rice at above-market price from 2011 by then-Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party saddled the nation with millions of tonnes in stockpiles and cost more than US$15 billion.
It also distorted the global market, with Thailand unable to export much of the high-priced grain and having to use it as cattle-feed.
Yingluck’s government was toppled in a 2014 coup and she fled the country three years later to avoid facing jail in a criminal case related to the rice program.
Her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, an enduring yet polarizing figure in Thai politics, whose term was marked by allegations of corruption, backs the Pheu Thai Party.
Agriculture, which employs about one-third of the nation’s total workforce of about 40 million, has seen its share in the nation’s economy steadily shrink over the past decades with low crop prices, soaring input costs and mounting debt.
More than 90 percent of Thai farmer households are indebted at an average of 450,000 baht, and the vicious cycle of debt and reliance on credit to overcome the burden pushes them into a trap, a Puey Ungphakorn Institute of Economic Research study showed.
If all the farm support measures announced by major parties are implemented, they could cost as much as 300 billion baht, Thailand Development Research Institute analyst Nipon Poapongsakorn said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS