Personal Rice Mill 

The Finance Ministry will review the use of millions of rai of land owned by the Treasury Department.
www.nationmultimedia.com/2008/04/23/headlines/headlines_30071332.php

... The move is a bid to bring the land into production as part of a broad strategy to deal with the food crisis. It follows instructions from the Cabinet, which also approved a budget of Bt10 billion to tackle the national food crisis systematically over the next 12 years.

.. The government will encourage farmers to grow more oil palm, cassava and other fuel crops. In addition, it will also focus on creation of irrigation systems, to ensure water supplies. The Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, the country's biggest agribusiness conglomerate, yesterday said the government needed to spend Bt200 billion to develop irrigation systems in order to ensure future farming was sustainable.

CP said other national plans would benefit from the development of irrigation systems. Montri Congtrakultien, CEO and president of CP's crop-integration business group, said the government should use skyrocketing commodity prices to invest in irrigation development, because the cost remained low.

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... Long-term irrigation project does not offer short-term political gain, because it requires years for the results to be realised. Some villages face annual droughts and are dubbed "chronic drought-affected villages". Thus, the villagers are forced to wait desperately for money handouts (vote buyings) from politicians. ... Many of the younger generation have decided to leave their farms to find jobs in the cities; they feel too insecure to continue on the land, because of the unpredictable nature of the weather year in year out ..