Rice production in Thailand represents a significant portion of the Thai economy and labor force. In 2017, the value of all Thai rice traded was 174.5 billion baht, about 12.9% of all farm production. Of the 40% of Thais who work in agriculture, 16 million of them are rice farmers by one estimate.
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 the land available for rice production, with a goal of adding to its already of rice-growing areas. Fully half of Thailand's cultivated land is devoted to rice.
The Thai Ministry of Agriculture projects paddy production for both the main and second crops to hit in the 2019–2020 season, dragged down by a drop in second crop production due to floods and drought. Jasmine rice (; ), a higher quality type of rice, is the rice strain most produced in Thailand although in Thailand it is thought that only Surin, Buriram, and Sisaket Provinces can produce high quality hom mali. Jasmine has a significantly lower crop yield than other types of rice, but normally fetches more than double the price of other cultivars on the global market.
Due to ongoing droughts, the USDA has forecast output will drop by more than a fifth to in 2016. Thailand can harvest three rice crops a year, but due to water shortages the government is urging a move to less water-dependent crops or forgoing one crop. Rice is water intensive: one calculation says rice requires of water per cultivated rai.
History
Until the 1960s, rice planting in Thailand consisted mainly of peasants farming small areas and producing modest amounts of rice. The Chao Phraya River delta was the hub of rice production. Agriculture constituted a large portion of the total production of Thailand and most Thais worked on farms. The extreme focus on agriculture arose for two main reasons: the vast amount of land available for farming and the government's policies of clearing land and protecting peasants' rights. The government helped peasants gain access to land and protected them from aristocratic landlords.
Due to the government's stance, urban merchants were unable to gain much control over the Thai rice industry. The government concerned itself with protecting farmers and not with overall production. As a result, Thailand was relatively self-sufficient, resistant to government intervention, and egalitarian. Most rice farmers owned their own land and exchanged labor between farmers was common. Rice production normally was not much more than the farmers needed to survive on.
As Europe was starting to come together on many issues including agricultural policy (including price supports), Thailand was starting to protect its rice farmers less and work with merchants more. The government started worrying about increasing production and extracting more surplus from the rice industry. Thailand turned to the merchants to put on this pressure and it worked very well.
King Bhumibol played a large part in rice policy during his reign, greatly increasing production. For this he received the first Borlaug Medallion in 2007.
Importance of rice
Rice is central to Thai society.Evenson, Robert E., Robert W. Herdt, and Mahabub Hossain. "Rice Research in Asia: Progress and Priorities". Wallingford, UK: CAB International in association with the International Rice Research Institute, 1996. Rice uses over half of the arable land and labor force in Thailand. Of Thailand's eight million farm households in 2020, four million cultivate rice. It is one of the main foods and sources of nutrition for most Thai citizens: yearly per capita consumption in 2013 was 114.57 kg. Rice is also a major Thai export. Despite its importance to the nation, the industry is under threat. According to Dr. Suthad 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 challenges."
Environmental issues Climate change has and will continue to harm rice yields. A study by Okayama University in Japan found that grain yield declines when the average daily temperature exceeds , and grain quality continues to decline linearly as temperatures rise.
Another study found that each increasing in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce yields of rice by 3.2%.
Traditional rice cultivation is the second largest agricultural source of recycled greenhouse gas (GHG) after livestock. Traditional rice production globally accounts for about 4.5% of recycled greenhouse gas emissions. The source of this agricultural methane is organic matter decomposing underwater in flooded paddies. Efforts to decrease agricultural methane (a practice which will help offset single use carbon from fossil fuel use) are being investigated.
Varieties Jasmine (Hom mali) originates in the country and remains the most popular aromatic cultivar. The Rice Department released five new varieties to celebrate the Coronation of Vajiralongkorn, ahead of the Royal Plowing Ceremony a few days later. Each is named "...62" after BE2562. This is a continuation of the tradition of his ancestor, Chulalongkorn, who founded the royal rice varieties competition. This was first held in 1807 and at first was specifically for the Tung Luang and Rangsit Canal districts. The next year it was held at Wat Suthat, and since then has been held at various locations around the kingdom. Vajiravudh continued the royal encouragement of varietal development, founding the Rangsit Rice Experiment Station in 1816 (now called Pathum Thani Rice Research Center and run by the Ministry). Thailand maintains a rice germplasm collection with 24,000 accessions, of which 20,000 are native Thai types ().
Pests Nilaparvata lugens and Sogatella furcifera are two of the most common. They are commonly controlled with insecticides but can be more cost-effectively controlled by a combination of insecticides and attractive nectar sources to recruit parasitoids (see §Parasitoids below).
Tungro is a constant problem. Oryza officinalis in Sukhothai Province was reported in 1990 to be highly resistant to tungro and several other pests, and already in use in several cultivars for that purpose.
Parasitoids Anagrus nilaparvatae and A. optibalis are common parasitoids of the above N. lugens and S. furcifera. They are attracted to nectar-producing plants intercropped with rice. Intercropping in this manner is a cost-effective method to increase yields and lower insecticide requirements.
Governmental policy
The government sought to promote urban growth. One of the ways it accomplished this was by taxing the rice industry and using the money in big cities. In 1953, tax on rice accounted for 32% of governmental revenue. The government set a monopoly price on exports, which increased tax revenues and kept domestic prices low in Thailand. The overall effect was 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 financing for dams, canals, locks, ditches, and other infrastructure in the Greater Chao Phraya Project. Pro-small farm mechanization policies protected agro-machinery manufacturers from outside competition. They also stimulated small machinery research and development that resulted by the late-1990s in nearly two million locally produced two-wheel tractors, as well as one million axial flow pumps for irrigation, hundreds of thousands of small horsepower rice threshers, and 10,000 small horsepower caterpillar track-propelled combines that are able to harvest in small, fragmented, and still wet fields.
With the combination of improved access to water and machinery, these policies prompted rice farms to increase from 35 million to 59 million rai from the 1950s to the 1980s. Rice production has about tripled in terms of total paddy rice produced. While Thailand's rice production has not increased every year, the trend line shows significant increases since the 1960s.
Starting in 2010 the government went from encouraging rice production to discouraging it. It initiated a program to encourage rice farmers to switch to other crops. The government's policy offered a 2,000 baht per rai subsidy for paddy fields converted to other crops. At the time, Thailand's 54 sugarcane processing plants were short of raw cane to meet demand. A ready market for sugarcane and the falling price of rice made switching to sugarcane compelling and many farmers made the switch. The transition has not been without controversy: first, because rice is a food staple whereas sugar is not, and secondly, due to undesirable environmental impacts linked to sugarcane farmers' use of between of paraquat per rai of sugarcane.
Impact on farmers While all of these advances helped improve overall production of rice in Thailand, many low-income farmers in Thailand were left worse off. Many peasants were unable to hold on to their land and became tenants. The UN estimates that Thai farmers who owned their own land declined from 44% in 2004 to just 15% in 2011. The government demanded tax revenues, even during bad years, and this pushed many low-income farmers even closer to the margin. Farmers have accumulated 338 billion baht in debt. In 2013, the average household debt in Thailand's northeast was 78,648 baht, slightly lower than the national average of 82,572 baht, according to Thailand's Office of Agricultural Economics (OAE). But the region's average monthly household income, at 19,181 baht, was also lower than the national average, 25,194 baht, according to the National Statistics Office. New technologies have also pushed up the entry cost of rice farming and made it harder for farmers to own their land and produce rice. Many farmers have turned to loan sharks to sustain their operations. In 2015, nearly 150,000 farmers borrowed 21.59 billion baht from these lenders, according to the Provincial Administration Department. Farm debt, mostly incurred by rice farmers, added up to 2.8 trillion baht in 2017. Of Thailand's 21.3 million households, 7.1 million households are farmers. Almost four million Thai households are in debt; 1.1 million of those debtors are farm households.
Farmers who already had large scale operations or could afford all the new chemicals, rice strains, and tractors benefited greatly while the average peasant was turned from a land-owning rice producer to a manual laborer on the farms of others.
Yingluck government's rice scheme