Rice Industry Statistics
During the launch of the agrifood by His Majesty, all the guests received several books as gifts. One of the books is a small booklet containing the Agriculture statistics of 2008. I was quite intrigued with the statistics on rice which looks like this:-
Throughout the last 10 years from 1999 to 2008, our local production has increased. The Agriculture Department has been slowly making local rice production efforts meeting the target of if I am not mistaken 20% of self sufficiency or something like that. That was not good enough and though the efforts of 2009 has been much more and has led to the new target of total self sufficiency in rice. Even from 1999 to 2008, we can see the local production increased from about 200 metric tons to about 900+ metric tons.
What's interesting is that the increase in rice production did not cause any dent in the rice imports. There was a sudden fall in 2000 but between 2001 to 2007, rice imports remained at around 30,000 metric tons and even increasing slightly in 2008 to almost 32,000 metric tons.
One effect is obviously this two data are on different scales but shown on the same paragraph. The data on imported rice is from 0 to 40,000 whereas on local production was from 0 to 1,000. So, the growth of local rice is quite miniscule to the overall scheme of things. The second obviously is population growth. Is it possible that any local growth is taken up by increasing population growth? The increase in 2008 I am speculating could be due to increased importation to buffer up our rice supplies due to the uncertainty of the supply exports from Thailand.
But whatever it is, it is interesting and without knowing much about rice industries and rice demands and supplies, it might be worthwhile to look at the data and see what can be read from it.
Throughout the last 10 years from 1999 to 2008, our local production has increased. The Agriculture Department has been slowly making local rice production efforts meeting the target of if I am not mistaken 20% of self sufficiency or something like that. That was not good enough and though the efforts of 2009 has been much more and has led to the new target of total self sufficiency in rice. Even from 1999 to 2008, we can see the local production increased from about 200 metric tons to about 900+ metric tons.
What's interesting is that the increase in rice production did not cause any dent in the rice imports. There was a sudden fall in 2000 but between 2001 to 2007, rice imports remained at around 30,000 metric tons and even increasing slightly in 2008 to almost 32,000 metric tons.
One effect is obviously this two data are on different scales but shown on the same paragraph. The data on imported rice is from 0 to 40,000 whereas on local production was from 0 to 1,000. So, the growth of local rice is quite miniscule to the overall scheme of things. The second obviously is population growth. Is it possible that any local growth is taken up by increasing population growth? The increase in 2008 I am speculating could be due to increased importation to buffer up our rice supplies due to the uncertainty of the supply exports from Thailand.
But whatever it is, it is interesting and without knowing much about rice industries and rice demands and supplies, it might be worthwhile to look at the data and see what can be read from it.
Comments
You make an important point on population growth. Eyeballing the chart, the increase in local rice production is linear. But population growth is EXPONENTIAL. BIG PROBLEM coming up!!!
Perhaps we should revise those targets.