The Thai cabinet approved rice price intervention measures today, aimed at discouraging farmers from rushing to sell their crops to rice traders or millers, but to store their harvests in barns of their cooperatives and to sell it when the price is right.
The cabinet has decided to set aside 55 billion baht, about 44 billion through the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), to be extended as credit or loans to farmers’ associations, cooperatives and farmers who have their own barns, to buy paddy and to hold the unmilled grain for 4-5 months, then selling it to millers when it is more profitable.
Government spokesman Chai Wacharonke said, through these measures, it is estimated that about four million, out of a total of 10 million tonnes of the 2023-24 rice crop, are to be stored by farmers’ cooperatives and farmers.
The cabinet has set the amount of credit to…
