Soaring rice prices sow hope - and trouble - for indebted farmersSripai Kaeo-eam, 58, a farmer who is struggling to repaying her loans, poses in front of her rice field during an interview with Reuters in Chai Nat province, Aug 30, 2023. The handouts came in place of boosting agricultural research spending, which hammered productivity, the experts said. Successive governments have spent 1.2 trillion baht on price and income interventions for rice farmers in the last decade, estimates Mr Somporn. Governments largely steered clear of market interventions until former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2011 rolled out a scheme that paid rice farmers above-market rates for their crop, both experts said. "We got trapped in our success," he said, underlining a drop in rice research investment from 300 million baht a decade ago to the 120 million baht allocated for this year.
