Story from The Nation
March 16, 2015
REFORMING the way to do farming, livestock raising, fishing and auditing of cooperatives, and restructuring farmers' Bt4.5 billion non-performing loans with the Farmer's Reconstruction and Development Fund are the missions of this government.
Agriculture Minister Petipong Pungbun na Ayudhya told The Nation in an interview last week that under the country's agriculture reform the ministry is focusing on five areas to promote sustainable agriculture.
To reform the area to grow a crop, the concept of a main province will be employed. The main province will have strong knowledge of how to grow the crop and provide that knowledge to neighbouring provinces. This is part of the zoning system that will manage the country's production of crops to match up demand in the market and stabilise the country's crop prices.
For example, the Central region is suited to growing white rice, the upper Northeast for sticky rice and the lower Northeast for jasmine rice.
The country's livestock industry will be reformed by focusing on three animals - dairy cows, buffalos and chickens.
The ministry plans to develop the quality and quantity of dairy cattle to raise production capacity for raw milk from 12 kilograms per cow per day to 15 kilograms.
Buffalos are presently only reared for their meat but buffalo milk will be made popular so that more of them will be bred and raised.
The buffalo population has dwindled from 500,000 to 300,000 heads and without timely measures they will become extinct within five years.
The chicken industry still imports chicken breeds rather than using local breeds. The ministry wants to promote local chickens for the industry.
The country's fishing system has more problems that relate to other parties such as foreign labour and neighbouring countries. The system will be revised, something will be done to solve the problem and the fishing process will be reformed.
The restructuring of NPLs at the Farmer's Reconstruction and Development Fund will be proposed to the Cabinet for approval this month.
As the latest hot issue is corruption in a cooperative that came from an error in the internal auditing system, the ministry is revising the act regarding the management of cooperative funds and also considering setting up a reserve of about 5 per cent of a cooperative's funds.
This reserve will be tapped when a cooperative faces a financial problem. Then the ministry will revise the act to open the state agency to investigate cooperatives more easily than now, especially to investigate their committee. This will also be proposed to the Cabinet for approval as soon as possible. The crop-zoning policy has also started, especially the policy to convert 700,000 rai of paddy fields to sugarcane plantations for the 2015-16 harvest season that starts in May. This is part of maintaining the rice price in this planting period.
"All of this can be done in one year under this government. This is also the way to manage crop prices to be stable for the long term," he said.
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