March 15, 2004
Thai Government Offer Loans And Free Land For Poultry Farmers
The Thai government unveiled a comprehensive plan to support poultry farmers hit by the bird flu crisis. The project will give registered landless farmers soft loans of up to Bt5 million and a five-rai plot of land as start-up capital for chicken farms.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob said the project should be ready to kick off by May 9.
Newin yesterday also declared that 27 provinces were now classified as being in the green zone, signifying that there was no recurrence of bird-flu 21 days after mass culling was completed.
The soft loans and land allocation for chicken farmers is the latest project under the government's Ua Athorn umbrella. Only those who registered with the government's poverty-registration campaign earlier this year will be considered.
"We will implement the project in six pivotal provinces first," Newin said yesterday.
The six are Buri Ram, Surin, Nakhon Ratchasima, Saraburi, Chaiyaphum and Lop Buri. These were chosen because each has ample underground water, relatively dry weather and is located close to chicken-processing factories.
The plan calls for 20 chicken-farming estates to be established, with each estate consisting of about 160 households. Each household would be allocated five rai of land.
Newin said the Agriculture Land Reform Office (ALRO) was assigned to conduct a survey aimed at identifying appropriate land for the farms.
Along with the ALRO, the Livestock Development Department, Assets Capitalisation Bureau, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives have been enlisted to the project.
"The soft loans for each household will range between Bt3 million and Bt5 million," Newin said. "Their monthly income should be over Bt10,000."
The chicken farmers will be required to repay the loans within 10 years. In the first two years the interest rate will be 2 per cent with no repayment of principal. The rate will then be 5 per cent for the remaining years.
Newin downplayed any concerns about the possibility of bad debts, saying that new chicken farmers could immediately take over if any problems occurred.
Although the country's poultry business suffered during the crisis, Newin was upbeat. He noted that Japan had already approved imports of heat-treated chicken Bt50 million a day from 22 factories.
"South Korea is also considering partially lifting the ban, as Japan has done," he said. Seoul has asked to see the list of factories passing Japan's standard tests.
He said Thailand should be able to resume poultry exports to South Korea next month.
Thailand put 51 of its 76 provinces under watch during the bird-flu outbreak. Following the mass culling, 27 provinces were declared flu-free green zones.
The remaining 24 provinces were under yellow zones. Provinces under the yellow zone will receive green-zone status if there is no further reports of the disease 21 days after the mass culling. Newin said the 24 provinces under the yellow zone could be divided into two groups.
The first group, consisting of 13 provinces, did not detect any avian-influenza cases after the mass culling was completed. The remaining 11 provinces did see a recurrences and carried out further culling.
"The latest culling was completed Saturday," Newin said.
Newin said he was informed that some farmers intentionally |let chickens die in the hopes of |getting compensation from the government. "If we find who did this, we will take legal actions," he said.
The government would not pay compensation for chickens dying of causes other than bird flu.In a related development, a chicken farmer in Uttaradit admitted that she fed her chickens with feed taken from her relative's farm at the time the flu hit her relative's area.
"I never thought it would spread the disease," Jintana Yimyanyong said. Her chickens were found infected with bird flu and were ordered destroyed.
Jintana said her relative's farm did not detect any infection at the time.
