After two years of falling rubber prices had driven many farmers into debt, hundreds of them blockaded the region’s main north-south road and railroad to protest.
“This was our last resort, our only option,” said Thaworn Ruengkling, a rubber farmer who says he can no longer earn enough from farming to cover the cost of fuel and fertilizer, never mind feeding his family.
“We can’t take it anymore,” Mr. Thaworn said Thursday at one of the intersections that the farmers had blocked with commandeered trucks and buses.
For years, breathless economic growth in Asia, especially in China and India, helped send the prices of commodities like rubber, palm oil and coffee soaring. But as Asia began to cool off and the West remained sluggish, the prices of many commodities have crashed, threatening the incomes of millions of farmers, especially in Southeast Asia.
The rubber farmers’ blockade has caused a political storm in Thailand, and analysts say it will not be the last. The Thai police tried and failed to remove the farmers here by force, a clash that has helped embolden the political opposition led by the Democrat Party, which is strongest in southern Thailand.
Bridget Welsh, a researcher based in Singapore and an expert on Southeast Asian politics, said that falling commodity prices were likely to have political implications in Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam as well, all countries where the government relies to varying degrees on rural support. In Indonesia, five million people work on palm oil plantations; in Malaysia, farmworkers and holders of small tracts of land are part of the core of the governing party’s support.
If prices continue to slide, governments in Asia may soon be faced with deciding which farmers to support, as Thailand has on a large scale by providing billions of dollars in subsidies to rice farmers, and which ones they cannot afford to help.
Ms. Welsh predicted that the price declines would “lead to instability and strengthen the opposition” in Malaysia and Thailand, and “expose regional governments to more scrutiny” of how they manage their economies.
The sharp decline in rubber prices — more than 45 percent in two years — appears traceable to a classic boom-and-bust cycle: farms that expanded when demand was high now produce too much rubber when demand is slack.
Thailand has long been the world’s leading producer of rubber, but over the past decade China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam have contributed to an increase in output of millions of tons, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
“We are in real trouble,” said Banlue Chankaew, a third-generation rubber farmer standing at a barricade on the main north-south road on Thursday. After splurging on cars, motorcycles, furniture and smartphones during the good years, many farmers have now had to borrow money, often at usurious rates from loan sharks. Those who cannot pay their debts have fled to other parts of the country, Mr. Banlue said.
Responding to the farmers’ calls to guarantee them prices well above current market rates, government officials have held negotiations and appear to be haggling over how much assistance they will provide. But the government has also sought to portray the protesters as troublemakers. The provincial police chief warned reporters and government officials on Thursday that it would be dangerous to visit the protests.
“Don’t risk your life,” said Maj. Gen. Ronnapong Saikaew, the chief of police in the province of Nakhon Si Thammarat.
Mr. Banlue does not elicit fear. Soft-spoken and courteous, he seemed out of place at the barricade. “I’m 45 years old, and this is my first time taking part in a protest,” he said.
Other protesters, especially younger ones, were armed with wooden sticks and slingshots. At night, they burn tires near the barricades.
Opposition leaders accuse Thailand’s prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, of botching the government’s response to the protests. Responding to reporters’ questions earlier this month, Ms. Yingluck said Thailand would not be able to influence the global rubber price because “with regards to the quantity of rubber, we have a small amount compared with other countries.” Thailand has been the world’s largest rubber producer since 1990, when it overtook neighboring Malaysia and today produces just under one-third of the world total.
The rubber crisis is one of a number of problems facing Ms. Yingluck, who had not held political office before becoming prime minister in 2011, and the opposition often faults her for being inexperienced and for lacking detailed knowledge of the economy. Beyond that, rubber farmers say she favors rice farmers, who are concentrated in areas where Ms. Yingluck’s political party, Pheu Thai, has strong support.
“We feel we are the forgotten child in the family,” said Mr. Banlue, who was also the deputy headman of his village.
The rubber farmers say they only resorted to blockades after repeatedly writing to government officials asking for help but never receiving a response.
“We had to think of a way,” said Wichan Raksapon, whose neat rows of rubber trees grow beside the blocked road, “that would make people understand that we have severe problems.”
Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/world/asia/thai-rubber-farmers-block-road-to-protest-prices.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
