Farmers assured of equal benefits

       LOP BURI : Farmers have been assured that they would receive equal benefits under the government's crop price guarantee scheme, including those who do not have any farmland of their own, says Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
       DISRUPTION BID: Security officers force back red shirt demonstrators as they try to disrupt Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s visit to Lop Buri’s Tha Wung district yesterday.
       Mr Abhisit spoke to farmers yesterday during his visit to the province, where the prime minister pre-recorded his Chuea Man Prathet Thai weekly programme, which will be broadcast today.
       About 800 farmers registered under the crop price guarantee scheme in Tha Wung and Muang districts attended the meeting.
       Around 23,000 farmers in this central province have joined the scheme.
       The PM stressed that landless farmers were also guaranteed inclusion in the scheme as long as they grew crops and the community committee could verify their rights.
       Mr Abhisit said farmers would be given equal access to the government's subsidies when the pricing of the farm products is done.
       Under the traditional crop price mortgage programme, only about 300,000 farmers out of a million-strong had enjoyed the benefits of the programme. The others were left out in the cold due to a limited number of mortgage quotas.
       Rather than purchasing the crops outright under the current mortgage scheme and storing them in state warehouses, the government will make up for the difference between the guaranteed and the market prices, significantly reducing the total cash outlay and storage costs paid by the state.
       A farmer will be guaranteed a crop price quota of between 20 and 25 tonnes, said Mr Abhisit.
       "The government can't afford to raise its guarantee ceiling more than this because it would create too much burden on taxpayers."
       However, Mr Abhisit conceded that the scheme might not eventually be successful and could lead to a fall in popularity of his government. " But the government would proceed with it for the sake of the majority of farmers."
       Some 5.16 million farming families in the country have registered for the scheme so far, says the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry.
       The ministry expected the scheme to cover 22.7 million tonnes of paddy in the first crop, 4.2 million tonnes of maize, and 23.58 million tonnes of tapioca.
       The government, through the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Co-operatives, plans to spend a total of 43 billion baht on options for rice, maize and tapioca in the 2009/2010 harvest.