Comments on: Garlic woes

By: Mekong navigation and the great garlic puzzle

Mekong navigation and the great garlic puzzle — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 23:16:01 +0000

[...] posts (here and here) I expressed some scepticism about the view that imports from China are the sole, or even [...]

By: jonfernquest

jonfernquest — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:36:11 +0000

Some kind of crop insurance (or hedging commodity prices) for small scale farmers to survive potentially devastating short term unpredictable price changes is needed, it seems.

But to enforce the insurance contract? Like if farmers agree not to grow garlic, then the insurance is invalidated if they grow it.

Private companies like CP Group are probably going to do a better job monitoring and enforcing the terms of contracts than the government. In what I’ve seen they’ve been quite successful working with small farmers on a contractual basis (contract farming) ranging from the original chicken farming (I even saw in Taungyi, Shan States, or so they claimed) to Tap Tim fish farming in the Mekong.

I know a year or two ago the World Bank was promoting crop insurance but that was before people realised the need for it.

By: Andrew Walker

Andrew Walker — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:51:25 +0000

Yes it is a real place. But Baan Tiam is not a real name. And, yes, I took “Tiam” from “kratiam.”

By: Jay

Jay — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:26:55 +0000

In response to your piece–Is this a real place? baan tiam? like baan kra tiam (Thai for garlic) The garlic village? Can you imagine the odor after a bumper harvest!

As to drop in prices, it depends on many factors such as garlic price elasticity, imports, amount of domestic production, and most importantly the number of vampire threats to the village