Thailand To Establish The Background, Significance And Prospects Of Rice Exporting Countries Idea

?Thai government proposed to established an Organization of Rice Export Country (OREC)during the 2007-2008 world food price crisis. Its aim is to stabilize the world rice price, and maintain the world food safety. After Thai Government made this proposal, it quickly met with opposition from many countries and regions, especially some rice importing countries. Why does Thai government still insist on building the OREC, in despite of facing fierce opposition and blame? Why do the rice importing countries argue against the building of OREC? What troubles and problems will the OREC face during the procession of its establishment? And what does its future like? This article will briefly answer these questions above by some research work.Southeast Asia is rich in nature resource and food production, especially the subtropical crops production, and produce the most amount of rice in the world. Thailand is called one of the three largest barns in the world, together with Vietnam and Burma. Since Thailand has the geographical conditions and natural factors that suitable to rice growth, its history of rice production is quite long. Meanwhile, because Thailand located in the bay area, and its maritime traffic is very convenient, the international trade of Thailand develops quite well. Now the rice production of Thailand ranks No.6 in the world, and its export levels is No.1 in the world.However, because of several market features of rice itself, the international rice price is not stay stable. We can simply sum up the reasons as follows: Firstly, the condition of international rice market. Since the main part of the rice production is used for domestic demand, and remain part is for the export. Therefore, the international rice trade volume accounted for a small proportion of the world's rice production, which lead to the unstable rice price in the international rice market. Secondly, some supply factors that influence the international rice price, such as changing weather, increasing population, roaring oil price and nation policy. Thirdly, several demand factors that influence the international rice price, for example, different countries have different culture of diet, which means they have various demand of rice, so it's difficult to establish a standard rice price index, such as rice quality, rice type, consumer preference and so on. Fourthly the economic globalization also has great influence on the international rice price. ?Thus, in order to strengthen the exchange of information of rice exporting countries in the international rice market, and stabilize the rice price in the international market, the Thai Government has put forward the proposal of building an OREC, which is similar to OPEC. This proposal is accepted actively by the exporting countries in the southeast of Asia, however, some importing countries are strongly against the idea. Besides, there are some crucial problems which are hard to solve in the building procession of OREC, such as hard to control the rice production, difficult to manage the agriculture production process of the member state, and because of the international rice trade volume accounted for a small proportion of the world's rice production, it is hard to influence the international market, and so on, which all makes the establishment of OREC face heavy resistance.In the last part of the article, it is recommended that the OREC which Thailand is going to establish should be similar to OPEC in its organization structure, however, its function and aim should be different from OPEC, and have its own character. To be specific, OREC should focus on strengthening the exchange of the production technologies between member state, so as to increasing the rice quality and quantities, and stabilizing the rice supply and price in that region, instead of pursuing the control of international rice production and price, just like OPEC does.