Agriculture forecast dims

The Agriculture Ministry has cut its growth forecast for the agricultural economy this year to within a range of 3.8% to 4.8% from between 4.5% and 5.5% on gathering global risk.

Lower exports, especially those of rubber and rice, continue to have an effect, while natural disasters such as drought and flooding are uncertainties that could spoil the second half.

Improving production and weather led Thailand's farm economy to grow by 2.9% year-on-year in the first six months.

Apichart Jongskul, secretary-general of the Office of Agricultural Economics (OAE), said most subsectors including crops, livestock, forestry and farm services showed improvement in the first half, with the exception of fisheries.

Unusual heat forced shrimp farmers to make an early harvest, yielding lower earnings from small shrimps.

In addition, white stool disease thinned supplies and was one factor that led the fisheries sector to contract by 1.6%.

The growth of the livestock sector was on track at 2.1%, due to greater supplies of hogs, broilers and eggs.

In crops, the high output of rice, tapioca, rubber and palm oil helped the sector expand by 4.1% in the first half.

Flood recovery and the government's pledging scheme were conditions that boosted rice production.

Mr Apichart earlier predicted high earnings from the pledging scheme would boost production of paddy for the 2012-13 season to 32 million tonnes, up from 31 million tonnes in the previous season.

Despite the euro-zone crisis, Mr Apichart expects exports of chicken meat to European countries to improve in the second half after the EU revoked the import ban on raw chicken meat from Thailand.

The OAE forecasts Thailand will ship 50,000 tonnes of uncooked chicken meat to the EU in the second half.

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