Thailand has been recognized as a global leader for producing and exporting a variety of agricultural commodities. The most important crop of Thailand is Rice. However, recently, Thailand’s top rank is being threatened by several of its competitor, especially Vietnam. Our government should do something to respond to this issue. A report in BCC news, “Flood-resistant rice 'also has drought-proof trait'”, should make us realize the importance of bio-technological research as one of sustainable solutions to solve the problem of agricultural productivity.
Professor Bailey-Serres and her team discovered that a rice trait that contains the gene called Sub1A has abilities of resistance not only against floods but also against droughts. The investigation revealed that both pathways that the plant's response to both submergence and drought are controlled together by the gene. Therefore, controlling the gene will activate the crop's ability to survive and recover from either kind of extreme weather event. "Our findings suggest that the plant recovers well from drought and growing new shoots," Professor Bailey-Serres said. "This is something that is also seen with flooding." Furthermore, the next plan, which aims to transfer the gene’s flood tolerance traits into high-yielding varities, has already been conducted.
This news made me remind of the problem of rice production in Thailand. The most of Thai rice is produced by farmers who, normally, receive monthly income less than normal standard of low income. So, the future of Thailand as well as the poor farmers in the north-east depend on sustainable policy to maintain high productivity of rice. Although the Thai government was successful in most of their plans to increase rice production, including investing in irrigation, infrastructure, a large amount of rice field is inevitably affected by extreme natural disasters, which is mostly drought and flood, every year. This not only affects entire economy of the country, but also significantly affects the poor farmers. That means whatever having been invested does not offer sustainable policy to satisfy the rice production sector. As we all know, technological advances play a key role on country’s development. For example, from the 1950s to 1970’s rice production per unit of land increased by almost 50 percent. It was because Thai rice farmers took the advantage of new rice varieties, strains, fertilizers, and technological advances that the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was distributing (Wikipedia, 2011). However, by adopting any know-how from other countries, we are expected to lose some benefits in exchange. Even worse, in “Lack of innovation as Thai R&D falls flat”, Experts said “Thailand has been slow to expand its research and development (R&D) capability, placing it in danger of losing out to global competition in its quest for economic growth via the production of higher value-added goods.” (¶ 1) It seems like our government has not realized the situation enough as they think expenditure on research will mostly result in publications on papers, which is not practical to develop the country. As long as the Thai government still dismisses the importance of expenditure on science and technology to increase productivity of rice or other products, it would become harder for Thailand to keep its competitive in the international stage. Conversely, if our country have plans to invest in potential research projects that can develop new rice or other economic crops strains, which can glow in every climatic environments and can endure every extreme weather conditions, our farmers could have much higher quality of life, and our economy would become more stable. Should our government increase R&D spending? I looking forward to hearing your comments.
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References
Kinver M., Flood-resistant rice 'also has drought-proof trait, (2011, March 04). BBC News. retrieved March 07, 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12636902
Wikipedia, (15 Feb 2011), retrieved March 07, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_Thailand#cite_note-phongpaichit-4
Yuthamanop P., Lack of innovation as Thai R&D falls flat, (2011, February 19). Bangkok Post. retrieved March 07, 2011 from http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/economics/222395/lack-of-innovation-as-thai-r-d-falls-flat
You made a good point, stating the rice problem in Thailand.
ReplyDeleteEven though the standard of living in Thailand is not as good other countries, it's still important for to increase R&D. In order to, improve the quality of life after doing research and experiment. Everyone knows this takes time and costs a lot of money, but it's worthwhile if we are talking about long term benefits for Thais.
At first I would like to thank agricultural technology(bio-technological) research . It's very good research even though it would be expensive. I also think about there are lots of the agricultural products problems nowadays. For example, lemons, coconuts and especially in palms. The one of reasons that palm products is not enough for demand is that there is no the product in Thailand because of drought. If we try to do the research to make a palm trait that contains the gene which has abilities of drought and flood resistance, we would not face the palm oil problem like these days.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you opinion, but if you see in diferent way,the problem is how management these technology in proper way and max potential.For example, in case of irrigation,If we have a good weather forecast, they can plan the amount of water that they can distribute it to farmers. Therefore we don't need to use a huge budgets in order to solve the problem.
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