Rice in Thailand
Encyclopedia
Rice
production in Thailand
represents a significant portion of the Thai economy
and labor force.
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 largest exporter of rice. Thailand has plans to further increase its land available for rice production, with a goal of adding 500,000 hectare
s 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 strain
s in a global market.
s farming small areas and producing modest amounts of rice (subsistence agriculture
). The Chao Phraya River
delta
was the hub of rice production at the time. Agriculture was a large portion of the total production of Thailand and most Thai citizens were peasants who worked on the farm. The extreme focus on agriculture arose for two main reasons: The vast amount of land available for farming and the specific policies of the government to clear more land and protect peasant rights. The government would help peasants gain access to land and also protect them from aristocratic landlords. Due to the government's stance the urban merchants were unable to gain much control over the rice industry in Thailand. The government was concerned with protecting individual farmers and not as much with overall production. This resulted in Thailand being relatively self-sufficient, resistance to government invention, mobile, and egalitarian. Most rice farmers owned their own land and exchange labor between farmers was common. Rice production was normally not much more than the peasants needed to survive on.
(including price support
s), Thailand was starting to protect its rice farmers less and work with the merchants more. The government started worrying about increasing production and exploiting more surplus from the rice industry. Thailand turned to the merchants to put on this pressure and it worked very well.
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 dam
s, canal
s, locks
, ditch
es, and other infrastructure
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.
(IRRI) was also disseminating knowledge, technology, new rice strains, and other information to rice producers in Thailand. From the 1950s to 1970’s rice production per unit of land increased by almost 50 percent.
s were left worse off. Many peasants were unable to hold onto to their land that they used to harvest rice on and had to become tenants to survive. The government would always expect tax revenue, even during a bad year, and this pushed many peasants even closer to the margin. New technologies also pushed up the entrance cost of rice farming and made it harder for peasants to own their land and produce rice. Farmers that already had somewhat large scale operations or could afford all the new chemicals, rice strains, and tractors benefited greatly while the normal peasant was turned from a land owning rice producer to a manual laborer on others land. To examine the efficiency of rice fields the graph shown in Figure 4 displays the increased productivity of the land. The yield of paddy rice in Thailand is clearly rising since 1961 in the graph. The yield is measured by dividing tons of rice produced by hectares of rice land.
. One such ceremony happens in Bangkok
involves the lord of the Royal Plowing Ceremony throwing rice seeds as he walks around the Grand Palace as the Crown Prince of Thailand watches. Another tradition that is common to central Thailand is a Cat Procession. This involves villagers carrying a cat around and throwing water at it, due to the belief that a “crying” cat brings a fertile rice crop.
, Burma, Laos
, and Cambodia
. The purpose would be to control production and set prices similar to the OPEC
cartel
that controls production of oil. Thailand had even submitted a proposal to the other countries for the organization but it was retracted in 2008. Many analysts believe that such a price setting organization will not work due to the inability of cooperation between all of the countries and their lack of control over farmer’s production. Thailand is now looking at creating a more forum based international organization to discuss supplies and yields of rice. Noppadon Pattama
, the foreign minister of Thailand, wants to call the forum the Council on Rice Trade Cooperation and was planning, as of May 2008, to invite; China
, India
, Pakistan
, Cambodia, Burma, and Vietnam. Pattama has also said the potential new international forum will not replicate any of the work done by the International Rice Research Institute
. The Institute was formed in 1960 to, “…improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure that rice production is environmentally sustainable” in the Southeast Asian region.
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
production in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
represents a significant portion of the Thai economy
Economy of Thailand
The economy of Thailand is a newly industrialized economy. It is a heavily export-dependent economy, with exports accounting for more than two thirds of gross domestic product ....
and labor force.
Thailand has a strong tradition of rice production. It has the fifth-largest amount of land under rice cultivation
Tillage
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of the soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shovelling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking...
in the world and is the world's largest exporter of rice. Thailand has plans to further increase its land available for rice production, with a goal of adding 500,000 hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s to its already 9.2 million hectares of rice-growing areas. The Thai Ministry of Agriculture
Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (Thailand)
The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of the Kingdom of Thailand is a Cabinet ministry in the Government of Thailand. The Ministry is one of the oldest ministry in the government, tracing back its existence since the 14th century...
expects rice production to yield around 30 million tons of rice for 2008. The most produced strain of rice in Thailand is jasmine rice
Jasmine rice
Jasmine rice , sometimes known as Thai fragrant rice, is a long-grain variety of rice that has a nutty aroma and a subtle pandan-like flavor caused by 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline.Jasmine rice is originally from Thailand...
, which is a higher quality type of rice. However, jasmine has a significantly lower yield rate
Crop yield
In agriculture, crop yield is not only a measure of the yield of cereal per unit area of land under cultivation, yield is also the seed generation of the plant itself...
than other types of rice, but it also normally fetches more than double the price of other strain
Strain
Strain can refer to:* Strain , variants of plants, viruses or bacteria; or an inbred animal used for experimental purposes* Strain , a chemical stress of a molecule...
s in a global market.
Pre-World War II history
Up until around the 1960s, rice production in Thailand comprised many peasantPeasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s farming small areas and producing modest amounts of rice (subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed their families. The typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to eat and clothe themselves during the year. Planting decisions are made with an eye...
). The Chao Phraya River
Chao Phraya River
The Chao Phraya is a major river in Thailand, with its low alluvial plain forming the centre of the country. It runs through Bangkok, the capital city, and then empties into the Gulf of Thailand.-Etymology:...
delta
River delta
A delta is a landform that is formed at the mouth of a river where that river flows into an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, flat arid area, or another river. Deltas are formed from the deposition of the sediment carried by the river as the flow leaves the mouth of the river...
was the hub of rice production at the time. Agriculture was a large portion of the total production of Thailand and most Thai citizens were peasants who worked on the farm. The extreme focus on agriculture arose for two main reasons: The vast amount of land available for farming and the specific policies of the government to clear more land and protect peasant rights. The government would help peasants gain access to land and also protect them from aristocratic landlords. Due to the government's stance the urban merchants were unable to gain much control over the rice industry in Thailand. The government was concerned with protecting individual farmers and not as much with overall production. This resulted in Thailand being relatively self-sufficient, resistance to government invention, mobile, and egalitarian. Most rice farmers owned their own land and exchange labor between farmers was common. Rice production was normally not much more than the peasants needed to survive on.
Post-World War II history
As Europe was starting to come together on many issues including agricultural policyAgricultural policy
Agricultural policy describes a set of laws relating to domestic agriculture and imports of foreign agricultural products. Governments usually implement agricultural policies with the goal of achieving a specific outcome in the domestic agricultural product markets...
(including price support
Price support
In economics, a price support may be either a subsidy or a price control, both with the intended effect of keeping the market price of a good higher than the competitive equilibrium level....
s), Thailand was starting to protect its rice farmers less and work with the merchants more. The government started worrying about increasing production and exploiting more surplus from the rice industry. Thailand turned to the merchants to put on this pressure and it worked very well.
Government policy
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
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
also provided finance for dam
Dam
A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...
s, canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...
s, locks
Lock (water transport)
A lock is a device for raising and lowering boats between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in which the water level can be varied; whereas in a caisson lock, a boat lift, or on a canal inclined plane, it is...
, ditch
Ditch
A ditch is usually defined as a small to moderate depression created to channel water.In Anglo-Saxon, the word dïc already existed and was pronounced 'deek' in northern England and 'deetch' in the south. The origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank...
es, and other infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
in the Greater Chaophraya Project. These policies helped lead rice land to increase from 35 million to 59 million rai
Rai (area)
A rai is a unit of area, equal to 1,600 square metres , used for measuring land area. Its current size is precisely derived from the metre, but is neither part of nor recognized by the modern metric system, the International System ....
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.
Increased production
A large portion of this rapid expansion was due to increased production of rice in northeast Thailand While in the past, central Thailand was the main producer of rice, northeast Thailand quickly caught up to a comparable amount of production. This was in part due to the new road systems between northeast Thailand and the shipping focused cities on the coastline. The villages that had a significant portion of rice production were also changing as farmers went from more subsistence practices to mostly wage labor (exchange labor also virtually disappeared). Cows were being replaced for tractors to work on the farm and irrigation technology was updated in most villages. The green revolution was just starting to spread among the world’s agricultural industries. Rice farmers and merchants took advantage of new rice varieties, strains, fertilizers, and other technological advances. The International Rice Research InstituteInternational Rice Research Institute
The International Rice Research Institute is an international NGO. Its headquarters are in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, and it has offices in sixteen countries...
(IRRI) was also disseminating knowledge, technology, new rice strains, and other information to rice producers in Thailand. From the 1950s to 1970’s rice production per unit of land increased by almost 50 percent.
Effects on peasants
While all of these advances helped improve overall production of rice in Thailand, many peasantPeasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s were left worse off. Many peasants were unable to hold onto to their land that they used to harvest rice on and had to become tenants to survive. The government would always expect tax revenue, even during a bad year, and this pushed many peasants even closer to the margin. New technologies also pushed up the entrance cost of rice farming and made it harder for peasants to own their land and produce rice. Farmers that already had somewhat large scale operations or could afford all the new chemicals, rice strains, and tractors benefited greatly while the normal peasant was turned from a land owning rice producer to a manual laborer on others land. To examine the efficiency of rice fields the graph shown in Figure 4 displays the increased productivity of the land. The yield of paddy rice in Thailand is clearly rising since 1961 in the graph. The yield is measured by dividing tons of rice produced by hectares of rice land.
Rice’s importance
Rice has many important roles in Thai society from food to work. Rice uses over half of the farmable land area and labor force in Thailand . It is one of the main foods and sources of nutrition for most Thai citizens. Rice is also of the main components of Thai exports. The Thai rice industry also faces a few big threats. According to Setboonsarng the top three threats are, “(i) increase in competition in the international market; (ii) growing competition with other economic activities that increases the cost of production, especially the labour cost; and (iii) degradation of ecological conditions. Rice research has to address these challeneges.” As the world becomes “flatter,” and the rice production around the world become more competitive, it becomes harder for Thailand to keep its competitive advantage and the margins Thai rice producers have been used to. For the second threat, the modernization of Thailand has led to an increase in wealth and the cost of labor, making it more expensive for rice farmers that use cheap manual labor. Third, the massive amount of land used for rice can have long term adverse affects on the yields of the land.Traditions
Rain-making ceremonies are common for rice farmers in ThailandThailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
. One such ceremony happens in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
involves the lord of the Royal Plowing Ceremony throwing rice seeds as he walks around the Grand Palace as the Crown Prince of Thailand watches. Another tradition that is common to central Thailand is a Cat Procession. This involves villagers carrying a cat around and throwing water at it, due to the belief that a “crying” cat brings a fertile rice crop.
Possible cartel
Thailand has at times considering creating a rice cartel with VietnamVietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Burma, Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
, and Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. The purpose would be to control production and set prices similar to the OPEC
OPEC
OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of twelve developing countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965, and hosts regular meetings...
cartel
Cartel
A cartel is a formal agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production. Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products...
that controls production of oil. Thailand had even submitted a proposal to the other countries for the organization but it was retracted in 2008. Many analysts believe that such a price setting organization will not work due to the inability of cooperation between all of the countries and their lack of control over farmer’s production. Thailand is now looking at creating a more forum based international organization to discuss supplies and yields of rice. Noppadon Pattama
Noppadon Pattama
Noppadon Pattama , Thai politician, became Foreign Minister of Thailand on 6 February 2008, in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. He is a member of Samak's People's Power Party...
, the foreign minister of Thailand, wants to call the forum the Council on Rice Trade Cooperation and was planning, as of May 2008, to invite; China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Cambodia, Burma, and Vietnam. Pattama has also said the potential new international forum will not replicate any of the work done by the International Rice Research Institute
International Rice Research Institute
The International Rice Research Institute is an international NGO. Its headquarters are in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, and it has offices in sixteen countries...
. The Institute was formed in 1960 to, “…improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure that rice production is environmentally sustainable” in the Southeast Asian region.