He said that farmers, unable to solve issues individually, should run enterprises together in their communities to boost their bargaining power and gain more support from the government.
Sansern also said the government had established the Cooperative Distribution Centre (CDC), which now has more than 100 branches across the country to help sell agricultural produce. He added that the CDC may also be expanded to meet demand from farmers wishing to supply their produce to the centres.
Established in October last year, Sansern said sales of the centres reached Bt6.3 billion in just six months.
In addition, the government had provided an online channel to distribute the products, with around nine categories of produce sold on the website co-opclick.com, including rice, water, coffee and dairy products. The online market had helped reduce the costs as well as reach customers over a wider area, Sansern said.
He said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had expressed his admiration for the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives in its fruitful attempts to assist the farmers in a sustainable way by helping them sell the products rather than subsidising them.
The spokesman added that the government would continue to support e-commerce and would help people develop their potential in online trading.
Chinese giant e-commerce website Alibaba.com had now collaborated with the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce and would open a training centre in Thailand with the aim of grooming at least 5,000 more online entrepreneurs capable of competing in overseas markets, Sansern said.
Meanwhile, following the fall in the price of rice, help continues to pour in to help rice growers sell at a better price.
Former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra helped sell tonnes of rice at Bt20 per kilogram, or Bt100 per 5kg bag, in the past week, with a lot of supporters buying rice from her. However, Democrat Party politician Warong Dechgitvigrom expressed concern that the sales would affect the rice price. He said that although it was true each tonne of rice would be sold at Bt20,000, it should also be noted that it was the price of rice, not rice grain.
Warong explained that a kilo of rice was milled from 2.38kg of grain. So when Yingluck sold the rice at Bt20 per kilo, the price of the grain would be only Bt8,403 per tonne, he said. Such a price is lower than the government’s offer at Bt9,500 a tonne, he said. Warong stressed that Yingluck was buying grain from growers at a cheaper price and therefore not helping the growers.