Monday, November 16, 2009

What it takes to be a Rice leader

by Lyn Resurreccion, Science Editor
Business Mirror, Manila, Philippines
November 15, 2009

 
BANGKOK—Good government policy and research. These are the main ingredients that make Thailand the world’s current top rice exporter, a Thai rice executive said.

“We have the prime minister, even our king, promoting rice. It is very important. Every government [official] is interested in rice,” Chairit Damrongkiat, deputy director general of the Rice Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, told the BusinessMirror at the sidelines of a media seminar in Bangkok conducted by Syngenta and attended by 22 journalists from Asia.

He said the king himself presides at the annual royal rice ceremony.

Damrongkiat noted that Thai farmers learn a lot on rice technology because they have experts who have doing researches in the past years.