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.
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