Bangkok--24 Feb--BRIA Regional Secretariat
Better Rice Initiative Asia (BRIA), a German Food Partnership (GFP) project, recently held its national management committee meeting at the Rice Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, to discuss the activity plan with its public-private partners aimed at improving the Thai rice value chains in support of the country‘s national rice production strategy.
Dr. Apichart Pongsrihadulchai, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, who chaired the meeting, elaborated on the rice production sector restructuring plan in his opening speech. Concerning Thailand’s current rice production, he said the supply of rice in Thailand outstrips the demand. Rice farmers suffer from the low price of rice. Productivity is low in unsuitable rice cultivation areas. The country needs to grow more rice for niche markets.
The restructuring plan is in line with the national rice strategy for 2015-2019 and calls for large community cultivation plot, plot managment, site-specific technology and market linkages. The objectives of the plan are firstly to lower production costs, increase rice quality, enhance Thai rice competitiveness in the global market; secondly to balance the demand and supply through rice production zoning; and thirdly to lift farmers’ income and ensure sustainable livelihoods from rice cultivation. The government earmarks some 5,409.12 million baht and borrows 12,519.43 million baht more for this scheme, which will benefit 236,155 farmer households. In 2019, the production costs per ton will be reduced by 3,000 baht per ton while the net income per household will increase by 27,235 Baht on average.
He added the Government currently helps farmers with measures to increase the income of small holder farmers by paying 1,000 baht per rai but not more than 15 rais per household with a budget of 40,000 million baht, measures to lessen the hardship caused by drought during 2014/2015 with a budget of 2,377.79 million baht and a project for income generation and agricultural development for farmer communities to reduce the impact of the drought by allocating 1 million baht to a total of 3,052 tambols (sub-districts).
In Thailand, the Rice Department and the German International Cooperation (GIZ) implement the BRIA project in collaboration with BASF (Thai) Limited and Bayer CropScience. BRIA has four components: training for sustainable rice production, awareness raising for sustainable production, post-harvest efficiency, market linkages and young agripreneurs.
Last year, BRIA and BASF launched the ‘Farmers Love Safety’ TV reality contest. Two teams of farmers from Ayutthaya and Suphanburi provinces took part in the contest, which focused on responsible and judicious use of crop protection products. They competed in disseminating such knowledge they had learned from experts at the Farmer School inside the Rice Department, to fellow farmers in surrounding communities. The show was aired on the SMILE Farmers program on Farm Channel. This year, the TV program will feature the concept of Integrated Crop Management (ICM) with a focus on seed management, soil management and crop nutrition, and crop protection.
In 2015, BRIA and the Rice Department will start to train farmers in Ubon Ratchathani. This activity is supported by Bayer CropScience. The achievement of this component will be measured using the following indicators: 80% of 300 lead farmers use their new knowledge on recommended farming practices in farmer trainings, 60% of 10,000 farmers trained apply recommended farming practices. Recommended training methods increase gross margin by 20% compared to provincial average.
About GFP and BRIA
The German Food Partnership (GFP) is a public-private initiative aiming at the reduction of hunger and poverty in emerging and developing economies. Currently, the GFP is composed of more than 30 European medium-sized and multinational companies, associations and implementation agencies of German Development Cooperation. The GFP was founded in 2012 under the auspices of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). On behalf of BMZ, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is coordinating the activities of the GFP.
BRIA comes under the umbrella of the GFP. BRIA improves rice production and rice-based nutrition by adopting a holistic value chain approach. This should enhance the income situation of producers and the nutritional situation of poor households. Know-how and technology transfer and building up agricultural extension services should increase productivity levels in rice cultivation. BRIA is helping the participating countries to achieve their national development strategies in the agricultural and food sectors. It is currently being implemented in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.