BANGKOK (The Nation/Asia News Network): The Commerce Ministry has created an online dashboard system to help chicken farmers keep an eye on the state of the market and plan their production accordingly.
The dashboard, devised by the ministry’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office (TPSO), will also help with marketing and sales, the Commerce News Agency reported on Monday (June 5).
TPSO director Poonpong Naiyanapakron was quoted as saying that this dashboard was the eighth such system developed for agricultural products.
The strategy office had previously developed dashboard systems for monitoring rice, oil palm, cassava, rubber, corn, durian and Vannamei white shrimp.
The dashboards help farmers monitor the quantity of products in the market, their prices and export potential, so they can plan their production and marketing accordingly, Poonpong added.
For instance, he said, the dashboard on the chicken market shows that Thailand has more than 30,000 chicken farmers who produce about 3 million tonnes of meat yearly.
Most of the chicken is produced in the Central region (50.8%), followed by 20% in the East and 14.7% in the Northeast.
The top three producers are Lopburi, Kanchanaburi and Chonburi provinces.
Chicken meat is the third biggest export from Thailand after rice and durian, the TPSO director said.
He added information from the dashboard shows that Thailand can further expand its export of chicken meat.
For instance, France, the US, Germany and Denmark are good potential markets for prepared chicken, he said.
Similarly, chilled and frozen chicken meat and parts can see growth in France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Mexico. Markets like Saudi Arabia, Germany, Iran, the UK and Qatar are also good potential markets for whole fresh, chilled or frozen chicken, he said.
Currently, chicken meat exports worldwide have a combined value of US$38 billion and the top five exporters are Brazil, the US, the Netherlands, Thailand and Poland.
According to the dashboard, Thai farmers earned about 44.9 baht per kilo of chicken from January to March, a year-on-year increase of 11.1%.
During this period, the price of exported whole fresh, frozen or chilled chicken stood at 70.78 baht per kilo, up 55.6%, while the price of cooked chicken was about 151.28 baht per kg, up by 7.6%.
In the first quarter of this year, Thailand earned more than $1 billion from chicken exports, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%.
Last year, Thailand exported more than a million tonnes of chicken worth $4.07 billion, up 24.7% from the previous year.
