Originally published on February 7, 2014
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Hundreds of farmers from Thailand's rural southwestern provinces gathered at the Ministry of Commerce in Bangkok on Thursday (February 7) to demand overdue payments for rice sold to the controversial rice subsidy program.
Some farmers are threatening to besiege the ministry if they do not receive payments within the next three days.
In hopes of increasing rural incomes, the Thai government bought off the farmers' harvest at twice the price of rice in global markets. But with rising supply from competitors, the Thai state had difficulties selling the grain. Losses from rice pledging have risen to 20 billion dollars.
The rice pledging scheme, along with other populist policies, won numerous votes from farmers which helped Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's party win a landslide election in 2011.
"We are going on the streets because we're facing a dead-end," Sombat Roek-anan, a farmer from Ayutthaya province, a stronghold of the ruling Pheu Thai party, said in a Fox News report. "The farmers used to be 100 percent behind the government before the rice scheme, but now it's 50-50."
In the rice pledging scheme, farmers take their paddies to be graded at state-owned mills. They then receive a certificate that can be exchanged for a loan at a federal bank. When the crop season ends, the farmers can opt to sell their crop to either the market or the government to repay the loan.
In 2012 Thailand lost its position as number one rice exporter in 2012 to India for the first time in 31 years.
This animation explains the rice subsidy program.
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