Thailand has a strong tradition of rice production. It has the fifth-largest amount of land under rice cultivation in
the world and is the world's second largest exporter of rice. Thailand
has plans to further increase its land available for rice production,
with a goal of adding 500,000 hectares to its already 9.2 million hectares of rice-growing areas. The Thai Ministry of Agriculture expects rice production to yield around 30 million tons of rice for 2008. The most produced strain of rice in Thailand is jasmine rice, which is a higher quality type of rice. However, jasmine has a significantly lower yield rate than other types of rice, but it also normally fetches more than double the price of other strains in a global market.
The
government wanted to promote urban growth and one of the ways it
accomplished this was by taxing the rice industry and using the money
in big cities.In fact, during 1953, tax on rice accounted for 32
percent of government revenue. The government set a monopoly price on
exports, which increased tax revenue and keep domestic prices low for
Thailand. The overall effect was a type of income transfer from farmers
to the government and to urban consumers (who purchased rice). These
policies on rice were called the "rice premium," which was used until
1985 when the government finally gave into political pressure. The
shift away from protecting the peasant rice farmers by the government
moved the rice industry away from the egalitarian values that were
enjoyed by farmers to more of a modern-day, commercial,
profit-maximizing industry.
The Thai government had strong incentives to increase rice production
and they were successful in most of their plans. The government
invested in irrigation, infrastructure, and other pro-rice projects.
The World Bank also provided finance for dams, canals, locks, ditches, and otherinfrastructure in the Greater Chaophraya Project. These policies helped lead rice land to increase from 35 million to 59 million rai from
1950s to 1980s. The graph on the next page, Figure 2, shows the
increased paddy rice production in Thailand from 1961 to 2007. The rice
production has about tripled in terms of total paddy rice produced.
While Thailand's rice production has not increased every year, which is
not to be expected, one can see a trend line for steady significant
increases since the 1960s.
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