The Nation and Bangkok Post to certain exteny are alike the totalitarian propaganda gasping for its last breath that could have been found at pages of communist periodicals of Warsaw Pact in the time of so called ‘perestroika’ . The rhetorics is strikingly similar. Far right meets far left in full circle. We should not be shocked here.
To be honest, I am not sure how the FAO get / produce all their data, so if somebody else knows better I’ll be happy to have more info.
What I know is that the FAO (or its major statistical partners; World Bank, Eurostats, etc.), send out questionnaires to the relevant statistical institutions in each country. For Thailand, it means that several organisations and ministries are involved because the stats collected pertain to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, etc. For agricultural production data (and not agricultural population), the data sent to FAO comes from the Office of Agricultural Economics.
Once the “raw” data has been collected, it is evaluated by country experts, adjusted to fit international definitions and standards (in forestry, they would for example add rubber plantations to the forest cover), and, when the data is believed to be erroneous or hasn’t been transmitted, it is corrected or replaced by expert guestimates.
Over the last few years, the FAO has made great efforts to improve the transparency of their data collection and adjustment procedures. I’ve seen quite detailed reports on the production of forestry data. For agricultural stats in Thailand, the relevant info is available from
1) “Metadata for National Agricultural Statistics”, http://faorap-apcas.org/rdes/PPT/thailand_metadata.pdf (which I just found and haven’t read yet)
and
2) FAO (2002) Proceedings of the national seminar on the system of food and agricultural statistics in Thailand. Bangkok: FAO RAP. available at http://faorap-apcas.org/thailand.html
One last thing, I believe the OAE data and enumerators are more reliable and serious than those of the DOAE. The problem with OAE – I believe – is their low sampling size in each agro-ecological regions. There’s huge variability within agro-ecological zones and I’m not sure they were or are currently able to get representative samples. As for the NSO agricultural census, they are not that reliable, in part because use untrained personnel (teachers mostly). Have a look at the previously mentioned sources for more info.
Again, I might be wrong, I looked in details to agri stats, but that was in 2002 for my masters .
Whilst the Kokang happen to be Han Chinese on the Burmese side of the border, the Wa live on both sides of the border ( Mao first met these erstwhile headhunters on his historic Long March to Yenan). With the Kokang they made up the main fighting force of the Communist Party of Burma after it had lost its strongholds in the Burman heartlands in the mid 60s. They were trained and supported by China in the 70s and 80s, until they mutinied and toppled the Burman leadership who went into exile in Yunnan in 1989.
They remain a trump card for the Chinese which the Burmese generals are all too aware of. Strategic thinking on the part of the Chinese leadership may well change in favour of a democratic as well as stable Burma, not one in constant turmoil and lurching from one crisis to the next. The junta seems to have become too much of a liability, particularly when China’s main trading partners in the West begin to lose their patience. Burma after all hardly enjoys the same stature in the global scheme of things for China.
The junta on its part appears to have an endless capacity to offend international sensibilities by one misdemeanour after another, even as the West itself is dying to tap into the Burmese market, and looking for an excuse to ease the sanctions may prove politically untenable so long as Aung San Suu Kyi remains incarcerated.
The generals’ attempt, notwithstanding Suu Kyi’s plight, at cosying up to the US by defying China could end in tears since China is better positioned than the West to give the junta real grief in a very concrete way, and we are not talking about something pretty tame and ineffectual as sanctions here. Not an invasion but a proxy war of attrititon, perhaps even a revival of a communist-led rebellion and civil war.
Les: ethnicity of the old elite? I guess Abhisit is their representative in government; he’s of Chinese ethnicity. At the top end, wasn’t the king’s mum Chinese? I agree that the ethnic card is a difficult one at this level. What is interesting is consider why it is that no one has really tried to use that card to unite pro-Thaksin people (maybe because he is Chinese?) against the ones they oppose. There is certainly an ethnic and class distinction if one looks at who attends yellow and red rallies.
Young also got the front page of Nation Weekend. Inside, his interview and some additional biographical data are in Thai translation. All this makes one wonder about political-journalistic backroom dealings…
Far more interesting than the Young interview is the article by Umberto Eco on Berlusconi. I know many on both sides of the Thai argument see similarities between Thaksin and Berlusconi, so I think it’s worth reading. The link is below.
That’s a very nice way of putting it. Look, I don’t like Thaksin. But Young’s analysis is blatantly racist and is deeply offensive to anyone of Chinese extraction.
What surprised me most by the speech was once you start using ethnicity you have to look at all sides, Thaksin’s people, PAD and the present government which in various ratios have the same cross-ethnic mix. Once you attack Thaksin on this, where does it leave Sondhi?
Thaksin is an easy target for Young’s complaint, coming from a Chinese tax-farming family. Many of us have probably done business with Thai-Chinese who think ethnic Thais are the ‘younger brothers’ of the Chinese (Hans I guess they mean), whatever that relationship means. Didn’t Lee Kuan Yew boast the Somchai government could hold cabinet meetings in whatever Chinese dialect? (I’m a bit vague on this, maybe someone can confirm what the old man actually said and why.)
Of course what we have to remember is that there is more than one elite in Thailand. There is the old aristocracy and there is the Thai-Chinese business community. At the moment the latter is fairly fractured but Young is definitely speaking for the former.
Thanks for the comments. Just a couple of quick responses (more next week).
On Vietnam – I will add it to the graph next week and re-post it. I ran out of time yesterday.
On Ban Tiam (the village where I have been working in northern Thailand). Rice yields there are well above the national figure – between 4 and 5 tonnes per hectare. I don’t have any figures on trends in yields over the past 10 or 20 years but the commonly expressed view is that yields have significantly increased as a result of improved varieties.
[…] have been a few recent reviews of Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand, which I wrote with Tim Forsyth of the London School of Economics. Here are some of the critical […]
Seek no more – the dependable “Not The Nation” has found the words in a delicious response headlined “Patronizing White Man With Degree Reassures Thai Elites With Unexamined Rhetoric”.
Much too good to quote just an extract – read and enjoy in full.
OAE data, like the Dept of Agricultural Extension ones come from interviews with village headmen or other “key” farmers who are supposed to know everything about the area cultivated, costs of production, yields, etc. in their village/tambon/amphoe area. In theory, officials of the OAE or DOAE are supposed to conduct serious stratified-sampling surveys, but I was told there’s quite a bit of “chair surveys” (sorry, I forgot the nice Thai expression for that), meaning lazy officials do not always do the interviews. As a result, the DOAE data showed exactly the same yields for all tambon and amphoe in my region of study and for several years in a row.
In other words, for infra-national geographical units, we’ve got to work with these data, but cannot blindly trust them.
The most comprehensive source of national-level data remain the FAO ones (same as IRRI).
To understand the low yields in Th, one must take into account the fact that 40% of Thailand’s is cultivated – a huge proportion in regional and global terms. That 40% is not solely concentrated in fertile, well-irrigated and drained areas and does include a lot of less well endowned regions. This fact has of course a direct result, diluting high yields with lower ones (as noted by Bystander). Another implication is that the 40% is to a significant extent occupied by farmers who – for perfectly understandable reasons – consciously decide not to aim at the highest possible yields, and rather aim at 1) minimizing risks of losses and debts in commercial rice cultivation and 2) concentrate their meagre capital resources into more economically rewarding and safer investments, either in other more lucrative crops, or more likely in non-agricultural endeavours (including education for their children).
I strongly believe the best way to augment yields in Thailand is not to aim at large capitalist farms – it’s been proven again and again that owner-occupiers in medium-size farms get the highest returns/ha and yields. Rather, making on-farm income stable and meaningful (i.e comparable to wage labor) is probably the only way yields on these types of farm will significantly improve. To do so, the key is probably in implementing a good social safety net and a crop insurance system for farmers (or any other policy change which would meaningfully protect all farmers from price and weather fluctuations).
I was amazed by the gross stereotypes included in Stephen Young’s comments. The CIA closely guards any documentation relating to Thailand, especially links to the upper elite. They as much as Sarit built up the modern cults that typify the Thai establishment’s worldview. The anti-Chinese comments are certainly offensive, considering that a large percentage of the Bangkok population is Sino-Thai. Most of the road improvements that took place in Isan were the work of US contractors during the Vietnam War and Chawalit who like Barnhan was milking favours for votes. Young fails to remember figures such as Thongin Phuriphat and Tiang Sirikhan who began the struggle for social justice in Thailand. He fails to realize that Gen. Phao was a beast created by the CIA.
From the information that I got from one of my uncle in Phan, Chaing Rai, Rice productivity in the area is a lot higher than the data shown in the post. Rice productivity of marginal land in that area is between 3.5-4 tone/hectare/crop whereas in good farmland farmers can get up to 6-7 tone/hectare/crop. Most famers in that area grow sticky rice, Gor Khor 6.
One possible explanation is that not all kinds of terrains are suitable for rice growing. Indonesia has volcanic soils which are well known to be quite rich. In Thailand, the best rice growing plots are in the central plains, which have already been maxed out with rice growing decades ago and are progressively turned into suburbs areas. Rice growing on more marginal areas with lower yield may then weigh down the national average, especially if they can’t reliably grow more than 1 crop per year.
Also, the strains of rice may be a factor. Do you have information on yield of jasmine rice, or other varietals? If there’s a high premium for one varietal, that will offset the lower yield. Thailand has always had a surplus of rice, so what matters is less how much rice is harvest but how much monetary return the farmers get for what they put in.
It is quite understandable that Lao’s (or other SEA countries’) rice yields be much greater than Thailand’s. Have a look at the proportion of rice production in irrigated vs upland conditions.
Can someone explain the meaning of “Ammat” discussed in the last question?
SY: “Ammat” (Top royal advisers).
PY: Well, who has more ammats? He has more. He’s the man of ammat. He’s not a man of clout. He has good fortune but doesn’t have clout. Well, when I say he doesn’t have clout, I use the word in an old-fashioned way. The true meaning is that the person must have good education, a moral foundation, a past life of a good person – and you have moral authority, moral legitimacy that comes from self-control and respect for others. So Thaksin doesn’t have clout [baramee]; but he has vassana [good fortune], so he uses power. He has got to take power away from the people
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Lost for words
Les: Maybe not. Just redefine Thaksin as truly Thai in the same way as the king and his mother were converted into symbols of Thai-ness.
Lost for words
Ralph –
What is interesting is consider why it is that no one has really tried to use that card to unite pro-Thaksin people (maybe because he is Chinese?)
Yes Ralph I guess you would need the red shirts to dump Thaksin… and…
Lost for words
Even “Not The Nation” had some problems with this interview:
http://www.notthenation.com/pages/news/getnews.php?id=822.html
In fact, the PAD played the Chinese card to oppose Thaksin.
$ufficiency economy
The Nation and Bangkok Post to certain exteny are alike the totalitarian propaganda gasping for its last breath that could have been found at pages of communist periodicals of Warsaw Pact in the time of so called ‘perestroika’ . The rhetorics is strikingly similar. Far right meets far left in full circle. We should not be shocked here.
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
To be honest, I am not sure how the FAO get / produce all their data, so if somebody else knows better I’ll be happy to have more info.
What I know is that the FAO (or its major statistical partners; World Bank, Eurostats, etc.), send out questionnaires to the relevant statistical institutions in each country. For Thailand, it means that several organisations and ministries are involved because the stats collected pertain to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, etc. For agricultural production data (and not agricultural population), the data sent to FAO comes from the Office of Agricultural Economics.
Once the “raw” data has been collected, it is evaluated by country experts, adjusted to fit international definitions and standards (in forestry, they would for example add rubber plantations to the forest cover), and, when the data is believed to be erroneous or hasn’t been transmitted, it is corrected or replaced by expert guestimates.
Over the last few years, the FAO has made great efforts to improve the transparency of their data collection and adjustment procedures. I’ve seen quite detailed reports on the production of forestry data. For agricultural stats in Thailand, the relevant info is available from
1) “Metadata for National Agricultural Statistics”, http://faorap-apcas.org/rdes/PPT/thailand_metadata.pdf (which I just found and haven’t read yet)
and
2) FAO (2002) Proceedings of the national seminar on the system of food and agricultural statistics in Thailand. Bangkok: FAO RAP. available at http://faorap-apcas.org/thailand.html
One last thing, I believe the OAE data and enumerators are more reliable and serious than those of the DOAE. The problem with OAE – I believe – is their low sampling size in each agro-ecological regions. There’s huge variability within agro-ecological zones and I’m not sure they were or are currently able to get representative samples. As for the NSO agricultural census, they are not that reliable, in part because use untrained personnel (teachers mostly). Have a look at the previously mentioned sources for more info.
Again, I might be wrong, I looked in details to agri stats, but that was in 2002 for my masters .
hope it helps
A Sino-Burmese border dance
Whilst the Kokang happen to be Han Chinese on the Burmese side of the border, the Wa live on both sides of the border ( Mao first met these erstwhile headhunters on his historic Long March to Yenan). With the Kokang they made up the main fighting force of the Communist Party of Burma after it had lost its strongholds in the Burman heartlands in the mid 60s. They were trained and supported by China in the 70s and 80s, until they mutinied and toppled the Burman leadership who went into exile in Yunnan in 1989.
They remain a trump card for the Chinese which the Burmese generals are all too aware of. Strategic thinking on the part of the Chinese leadership may well change in favour of a democratic as well as stable Burma, not one in constant turmoil and lurching from one crisis to the next. The junta seems to have become too much of a liability, particularly when China’s main trading partners in the West begin to lose their patience. Burma after all hardly enjoys the same stature in the global scheme of things for China.
The junta on its part appears to have an endless capacity to offend international sensibilities by one misdemeanour after another, even as the West itself is dying to tap into the Burmese market, and looking for an excuse to ease the sanctions may prove politically untenable so long as Aung San Suu Kyi remains incarcerated.
The generals’ attempt, notwithstanding Suu Kyi’s plight, at cosying up to the US by defying China could end in tears since China is better positioned than the West to give the junta real grief in a very concrete way, and we are not talking about something pretty tame and ineffectual as sanctions here. Not an invasion but a proxy war of attrititon, perhaps even a revival of a communist-led rebellion and civil war.
Lost for words
Les: ethnicity of the old elite? I guess Abhisit is their representative in government; he’s of Chinese ethnicity. At the top end, wasn’t the king’s mum Chinese? I agree that the ethnic card is a difficult one at this level. What is interesting is consider why it is that no one has really tried to use that card to unite pro-Thaksin people (maybe because he is Chinese?) against the ones they oppose. There is certainly an ethnic and class distinction if one looks at who attends yellow and red rallies.
Lost for words
Young also got the front page of Nation Weekend. Inside, his interview and some additional biographical data are in Thai translation. All this makes one wonder about political-journalistic backroom dealings…
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
Jean-Philippe, how do FAO/IRRI get their data?
Lost for words
Far more interesting than the Young interview is the article by Umberto Eco on Berlusconi. I know many on both sides of the Thai argument see similarities between Thaksin and Berlusconi, so I think it’s worth reading. The link is below.
Daily Telegraph UK
Lost for words
tettyan –
That’s a very nice way of putting it. Look, I don’t like Thaksin. But Young’s analysis is blatantly racist and is deeply offensive to anyone of Chinese extraction.
What surprised me most by the speech was once you start using ethnicity you have to look at all sides, Thaksin’s people, PAD and the present government which in various ratios have the same cross-ethnic mix. Once you attack Thaksin on this, where does it leave Sondhi?
Thaksin is an easy target for Young’s complaint, coming from a Chinese tax-farming family. Many of us have probably done business with Thai-Chinese who think ethnic Thais are the ‘younger brothers’ of the Chinese (Hans I guess they mean), whatever that relationship means. Didn’t Lee Kuan Yew boast the Somchai government could hold cabinet meetings in whatever Chinese dialect? (I’m a bit vague on this, maybe someone can confirm what the old man actually said and why.)
Of course what we have to remember is that there is more than one elite in Thailand. There is the old aristocracy and there is the Thai-Chinese business community. At the moment the latter is fairly fractured but Young is definitely speaking for the former.
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
Thanks for the comments. Just a couple of quick responses (more next week).
On Vietnam – I will add it to the graph next week and re-post it. I ran out of time yesterday.
On Ban Tiam (the village where I have been working in northern Thailand). Rice yields there are well above the national figure – between 4 and 5 tonnes per hectare. I don’t have any figures on trends in yields over the past 10 or 20 years but the commonly expressed view is that yields have significantly increased as a result of improved varieties.
Forest guardians, forest destroyers
[…] have been a few recent reviews of Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand, which I wrote with Tim Forsyth of the London School of Economics. Here are some of the critical […]
Lost for words
Seek no more – the dependable “Not The Nation” has found the words in a delicious response headlined “Patronizing White Man With Degree Reassures Thai Elites With Unexamined Rhetoric”.
Much too good to quote just an extract – read and enjoy in full.
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
OAE data, like the Dept of Agricultural Extension ones come from interviews with village headmen or other “key” farmers who are supposed to know everything about the area cultivated, costs of production, yields, etc. in their village/tambon/amphoe area. In theory, officials of the OAE or DOAE are supposed to conduct serious stratified-sampling surveys, but I was told there’s quite a bit of “chair surveys” (sorry, I forgot the nice Thai expression for that), meaning lazy officials do not always do the interviews. As a result, the DOAE data showed exactly the same yields for all tambon and amphoe in my region of study and for several years in a row.
In other words, for infra-national geographical units, we’ve got to work with these data, but cannot blindly trust them.
The most comprehensive source of national-level data remain the FAO ones (same as IRRI).
To understand the low yields in Th, one must take into account the fact that 40% of Thailand’s is cultivated – a huge proportion in regional and global terms. That 40% is not solely concentrated in fertile, well-irrigated and drained areas and does include a lot of less well endowned regions. This fact has of course a direct result, diluting high yields with lower ones (as noted by Bystander). Another implication is that the 40% is to a significant extent occupied by farmers who – for perfectly understandable reasons – consciously decide not to aim at the highest possible yields, and rather aim at 1) minimizing risks of losses and debts in commercial rice cultivation and 2) concentrate their meagre capital resources into more economically rewarding and safer investments, either in other more lucrative crops, or more likely in non-agricultural endeavours (including education for their children).
I strongly believe the best way to augment yields in Thailand is not to aim at large capitalist farms – it’s been proven again and again that owner-occupiers in medium-size farms get the highest returns/ha and yields. Rather, making on-farm income stable and meaningful (i.e comparable to wage labor) is probably the only way yields on these types of farm will significantly improve. To do so, the key is probably in implementing a good social safety net and a crop insurance system for farmers (or any other policy change which would meaningfully protect all farmers from price and weather fluctuations).
Lost for words
Seriously Clueless
I was amazed by the gross stereotypes included in Stephen Young’s comments. The CIA closely guards any documentation relating to Thailand, especially links to the upper elite. They as much as Sarit built up the modern cults that typify the Thai establishment’s worldview. The anti-Chinese comments are certainly offensive, considering that a large percentage of the Bangkok population is Sino-Thai. Most of the road improvements that took place in Isan were the work of US contractors during the Vietnam War and Chawalit who like Barnhan was milking favours for votes. Young fails to remember figures such as Thongin Phuriphat and Tiang Sirikhan who began the struggle for social justice in Thailand. He fails to realize that Gen. Phao was a beast created by the CIA.
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
From the information that I got from one of my uncle in Phan, Chaing Rai, Rice productivity in the area is a lot higher than the data shown in the post. Rice productivity of marginal land in that area is between 3.5-4 tone/hectare/crop whereas in good farmland farmers can get up to 6-7 tone/hectare/crop. Most famers in that area grow sticky rice, Gor Khor 6.
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
One possible explanation is that not all kinds of terrains are suitable for rice growing. Indonesia has volcanic soils which are well known to be quite rich. In Thailand, the best rice growing plots are in the central plains, which have already been maxed out with rice growing decades ago and are progressively turned into suburbs areas. Rice growing on more marginal areas with lower yield may then weigh down the national average, especially if they can’t reliably grow more than 1 crop per year.
Also, the strains of rice may be a factor. Do you have information on yield of jasmine rice, or other varietals? If there’s a high premium for one varietal, that will offset the lower yield. Thailand has always had a surplus of rice, so what matters is less how much rice is harvest but how much monetary return the farmers get for what they put in.
More on Thailand’s low agricultural productivity
It is quite understandable that Lao’s (or other SEA countries’) rice yields be much greater than Thailand’s. Have a look at the proportion of rice production in irrigated vs upland conditions.
http://www.irri.org/gis/ricedist/maps/rice_asia_2005.png
http://www.irri.org/science/ricestat/data/may2008/WRS2008-Table30.pdf
Lost for words
The second part of the interview is as of today published on The Nation
Can someone explain the meaning of “Ammat” discussed in the last question?
SY: “Ammat” (Top royal advisers).
PY: Well, who has more ammats? He has more. He’s the man of ammat. He’s not a man of clout. He has good fortune but doesn’t have clout. Well, when I say he doesn’t have clout, I use the word in an old-fashioned way. The true meaning is that the person must have good education, a moral foundation, a past life of a good person – and you have moral authority, moral legitimacy that comes from self-control and respect for others. So Thaksin doesn’t have clout [baramee]; but he has vassana [good fortune], so he uses power. He has got to take power away from the people