The Agriculture Ministry plans to seek cabinet approval next week to set aside 3-4 billion baht to compensate farmers affected by floods.
The floods have affected an estimated 4 million rai that of farmlands, including 2.8 million rai of rice fields, one million rai of field crops and 120,000 rai of orchards, said Apichart Jongskul, the secretary-general of the Office of Agricultural Economics.
He said that of the flood-hit rice farmland, one million rai were ruined and it was necessary for the government to minimise the impact.
"Many of these farmers had been told early this year to delay planting their crops in order to avoid impact from drought. They agreed to do so but when their paddy started to ripen, floods hit the plantations," he said.
It is the obligation for the government to shoulder their cost, at about 55% of total production cost estimated at 4,000 baht per rai, he said. If the cabinet approved the idea, rice farmers would receive about 2,200 baht per rai to offset costs from seedlings and fertilisers.
In a related development, Mr Apichart said that the current floods, drought early this year, and the strong baht were expected to reduce farm household incomes for the 2010-11 crop year
He said that in addition to lost sales opportunities when produce was damaged, the farm sector would see reduced income in areas such as farm services and wages from reaping paddy.
Mr Apichart said that strong prices helped increase average cash income to farmers by 2.5% to 135,531 baht per household in the crop year that ended in April 2010.
Food crops. mainly rice have attributed a big portion, up to 86% to the country's total farm earnings, and the balance is from livestock and other sources. There are 5.9 million farm households across the country and their earnings will be a key measure to assess the effectiveness of government policies.
Source: Bangkok Post
